Haven’t used windows in five years or so but I’ve kept hearing bad things. This really is the icing on the cake though. Yea the AI stuff is dumb but if a OS manufacturer can’t be bothered to interact with their own UI libraries to build native UIs something has gone horribly wrong.
But this results in chasing a new paradigm every few years to elicit new excitement from the developers. It'll always be more newsworthy to bring in a new framework than add incremental fixes to the old one.
React has had tremendous success in the web world, so why not try and get those developers more comfortable producing apps for your platform?
(Tangentially, see also the mixed reaction to Mac native apps switching from AppKit to SwiftUI)
UX was fine in the Windows Forms days, and WPF was a large step forward (responsive layouts, etc...). The problem was after that it all fell apart with Windows 8 and the attempt to switch to Metro, followed by the Windows Store fiasco and attempting to move to a sandboxed application model.
It all comes down to Microsoft's failure to adapt to mobile/tablets in so many ways. Which is kind of hilarious, because they had some really cool tech for the time (the PocketPCs were pretty fun back in the day, before touch came along).
I've seen time and again, things like apps rewritten from scratch because nobody knew C++, and they only had C# devs. Or a massive runaround because the last guy on the team who knew C++ wrote a bunch of stuff and left a couple years back, and now nobody really knew how any of that stuff worked.
> React has had tremendous success in the web world, so why not try and get those developers more comfortable producing apps for your platform?
IMO - this is worth talking about. Zune, Windows Phone, and some others died when they did not, in fact, suck, and were pretty good products which while late to the game, could have competed if there had just been a decent app ecosystem.
Their only misstep was making one of their colorways poop brown! That and being too late to market with a phone that used the same design language
There was also the crap that was Windows Media Player 11 which I tried to like for about a month.
There was also the incompatibility with Microsoft’s own DRM ecosystem in PlaysForSure which was full of these subscription music services, some of which were quite popular with the kind of people that were inclined to buy a Zune: folks in Microsoft’s ecosystem that had passed up on using an iPod and used something from SanDisk, Creative, Toshiba or iRiver instead. This is because they wanted to replicate the entire iPod+iTunes model entirely.
The 2006 lineup of iPods was also particularly strong, and included the first aluminum iPod nano’s. When Microsoft announced and released the Zune, they were counter-programming against that, right into the Holiday season with a new brand that had no name ID, with a product that was just like the iPod, couldn’t play any of your music from iTunes or Rhapsody, but with… HD radio.
More than a few missteps were made.
> Their only misstep was making one of their colorways poop brown
I mean, iPhone is a really ridiculous name as well if you stop to think about it.
Google was extremely aggressive in muscling Microsoft out. They refused to release a Gmail, YouTube or Maps client for Windows Phone but made sure those services did not work (properly).
And indeed on top of that, Microsoft switched UI frameworks 3 or 4 times. And they left phones behind on the old OS releases repeatedly, that then couldn't run the new frameworks.
Still, Windows Phone its UI concept was really great, and I sorely miss the durability of polycarbonate bodies versus the glass, metal and standard plastic bodies of today.
They basically couldn't stick to a strategy and alienated every potential audience one by one. I was trying to make a Windows Phone app back then and for developers they forced them to go through an extremely difficult series of migrations where some APIs were supported on some versions and others on other versions and they were extremely unhelpful in the process.
They had a great opportunity with low-end phones because Nokia managed to make a very good ~$50 Windows Phone. Microsoft decided there was no money in that after they bought Nokia they immediately wanted to hard pivot to compete head-to-head with Apple with Apple-like prices. They then proceeded to churn through 'flagships' that suffered updates that broke and undermined those flagships shortly after they released thus alienating high end users as well.
Having worked at Microsoft I think the greatest problem with the culture there is that everyone is trying to appeal to a higher up rather than customers, and higher ups don't care because they're doing the same. I think that works out OK when defending incumbency but when battling in a competitive landscape Microsoft has no follow through because most shot callers are focused on their career trajectory over a <5 year time frame.
That was my impression of one of the major problems when I worked there 2008-2011. But I don't think it's just one problem.
Besides, because it's an older company, it might have more organizational entropy, i.e. dysfunctional middle-management. As you say it's probably several other causes too. But still, hard to understand how they can create F#, F*, and Dafny, just to name a few, and fail with their mainstream products.
I thought about this a lot while working at a high-growth company recently.
Decided that regular (quarterly) manager rankings (HR-supported, anonymous) by 2-3 levels of subordinates is the only way to solve this at scale.
The central problem is: assuming a CEO accidentally promoted a bad middle manager, then how do they ever find out?
Most companies (top-down rankings-only) use project success as their primary manager performance signal.
Unfortunately, this has 3 problems: (1) project success doesn't prove a manager isn't bad, (2) above-managers only hear from managers, and (3) it incentivizes managers to hack project success metrics / definitions.
Adding a servant/leader skip-level metric is a critical piece of information on "On, this person is toxic and everyone thinks poorly of them, despite the fact that they say everyone loves them."
I think a few years after I left when more Big Tech opened offices in Seattle, competing companies started paying Bay Area salaries for Seattle living, removing this argument. I haven't watched this closely in recent years.
But fwiw, I was able to save and invest a lot in my Seattle days, despite a salary that was lower than in the bay.
Basically the housing price difference can mean buying a nice house close to your job vs renting a room in a share-apartment.
Best of both worlds is to save in a high-cost area then move to a cheaper area.
I don't know. I know there are a lot of people who want to work on the OS source code, given the chance, but need some hand holding in the beginning. Companies in general are not willing to give them the chance, because they don't want to hand hold them.
It is my opinion that developer ability is on a Pareto distribution, like the 80 20 rule when 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. The job market is more liquid for those that are extremely productive so it’s pretty easy to for them to get a pay rise of 30% by switching companies. In the worst case you can often come back with a promotion because, like many companies, Microsoft is more likely to promote you when trying to poach you back. Doing a 2 year stint at Amazon was quite common. The other problem is that when your best people leave is that the process is iterative, not only are you getting paid less but you are now working with people who couldn’t easily switch jobs. You start being surrounded by incompetence. Stack ranking, which I hear is still being done unofficially, also means that you put your promotion and career in danger by joining a highly productive team. So it is rather difficult to get highly productive people to work on the same team.
Being paid less, being surrounded by incompetence, and being forced to engage in constant high stakes politicking really sucks.
Otherwise as you said the only way is to offer the best compensation so that people don't leave. But again those people probably would leave for different reasons (culture e.g.).
And the fact that it's impossible to poach people from companies offering a higher salary than you do. Unless you give them something more, like better conditions, or "mission", or the idea to work on something cool, but I don't think any of those apply to Microsoft.
But the actual issue is that if you underpay people they will not feel respected and valued so they will either not be motivated or leave. So you cannot pay below market, but you do not need to pay FB salaries either.
Also compensation is a sign of respect and influences motivation. If you position yourself lower in the market, there is no reason to deliver top results for less money, correct? This attracts mediocrity, especially in management, and slowly kills companies. Usually there is no way back, no large company can replace the entire management and once and the mediocre ones will reject new, better ones.
All different business units.
Just go watch a few recordings on their YouTube channel.
IIRC .NET was banned from core Windows components after longhorn died, but its been 20 years. .NET is fast now, and C++ is faster still. Externally developed web frameworks shouldn’t be required for Windows.
Microsoft has produced some great technology and when I was last there I was definitely focusing on getting as much of the good stuff out into open source as possible.
Back in the early V8 days the execs imagined JavaScript would keep getting exponentially faster, I tired to explain with a similar investment anything V8 could do dotnet could do better as we had more information available for optimization.
Windows team even refuses to have managed bindings for DirectX, like Apple and Google do on their platforms.
Managed DirectX and XNA were pushed by highly motivated individuals, and lasted only as long as they stayed at Microsoft.
DevDiv is a "here C++ rules!" silo, even the Rust adoption is being widely embraced at Azure, less so on Windows team.
Basically you have tight OS integration vs developer friendly cross platform.
I think Microsoft’s framework chasing has been a betrayal of that philosophy. Internal divisional politics have been major drivers behind fracturing and refusing to unify the stack and its UI approach, and without clear guidance from the Office team the direction of the entire platforms UI is opaque. Short term resume and divisional wins at the expense of the whole ecosystem.
A developer centric platform would let developers easily create platform specific UIs that look modern and normal. As-is the answer to how to ‘hello world’ a windows desktop app is a five hour “well, akshully…” debate that can reasonably resolve to using Meta’s stack. “VB6 for the buttons, C++ for the hard stuff” is a short conversation, at least.
Building a macOS 26 only app in SwiftUI today is a great UX, just as fast as AppKit.
But it takes quite some effort to turn an iOS SwiftUI app into a real macOS experience. Though most macOS optimizations help for iPadOS as well.
my Windows API knowledge (essentially: just Win32) is still exactly as useful as it was then, having missed the 7 or 8 different UI frameworks in the interim
Since Vista most newer APIs are done in COM, or WinRT nowadays.
I've heard a Microsoft executive talk about win32 as legacy that they want to replace. I don't think that's realistic though, it's probably the last piece of technology keeping people on the platform.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/win32-and-com/win32-an...
Win32, the C API, is stagnant since Windows XP, other than some ...Ex and ...ExN kind of additions.
As mentioned above, the new APIs are mostly delivered as COM, occasionally with some .NET bindings.
There is still a silo trying to push WinRT now on Win32 side, although given how they made a mess of the developer experience only those with Microsoft salaries care about it.
This oldie shows some of the background,
https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-winrt...
Smells like Microsoft was trying to create APIs based on assumptions versus a 1:1 method that exposes managed code and hides unmanaged.
WinRT can be avoided if you don't do any modern stuff like the new context menu, WinUI, or Windows ML.
I think MFC is now long-time dead and buried, but at the time I liked it despite the ugly macros.
How long did it last. Ironically it still gives me the shits because you can't select text on Netflix's front end.
Because web stuff utterly sucks for making UIs on the desktop. Microsoft either doesn't know this (bad sign), or is choosing to use the trendy thing even though it'll make their software worse for customers (a worse sign). Either way it's a very bad look from MS.
sadly I loved azure data studio despite its being afflicted with electron, but it became so bug infested they had to completely abandon it.
I attempted to use WinUI 3, and could not even get PNGs to render the colors correctly, no matter what setting I tried.
Then I gave Tauri a try, and everything worked out of the box, with the PNGs rendering even better than in the Windows Photos app.
Building the UI was much easier, it looked better, and you get to build the "backend" in Rust.
Nothing about this sucked.
I'll take AppKit -> SwiftUI over Win32-> windowsx.h -> VB6 -> MFC -> ATL -> WTL -> WFC -> WinForms -> WPF -> WinRT -> UWP -> WinUI3 -> MAUI.
Even with all that Microsoft still went outside and used React Native for the start menu and Electron for the Visual Studio installer and Visual Studio Code.
It’s been this way for over a decade. The year of the Linux desktop was 2009; the world is only just catching up.
Yeah, that’s a misconfigured system. I bet you can fuck up Linux enough to get a similar experience.
I’ve always been using Windows and the only time I ever had to wait that long was around the Win98 times on slow hardware.
After login, I can instantly use everything on Win 11, and the only delay is a bunch of apps starting (that I chose to start on boot).
I've noticed Microsoft has introduced things like programs hijacking the screen (e.g. first launch of Edge, even if the launch was unintentional) and they have been making it increasingly difficult to make a local account on installation (even in the Pro version). Things like promotions for Xbox whatever popping up while I'm at work also tweak me the wrong way. Of course they don't know I'm at work, which is all the more reason not to do it!
As an operating system, I would rate it as fine. Compared to Linux, it appears to have performance issues in some areas, with file access being the main one I notice. They have made some progress in some areas (improved terminal, winget for software management). Compared to Windows of 20 years ago, the base operating system appears to be much better. But none of that means little when your main goal is for the "operating system" to get out of your way and let you use what matters.
Why they thought it couldn't be done with the .NET stack they already had (this was after the purchase of Xamarin and Blazor becoming a thing, mind you) still baffles me.
And I say this hating everything about Microsoft and Windows. That phone clicked just right with the tile design and overall usability. Of course, MS having pulled the plug, it's basically a DRM brick now.
If it wasn’t for 3rd parties sunsetting their apps, there would have been no reason to give it up.
Despite being a highly underpowered dirt cheap phone it was incredibly smooth and fast to use.
MeeGo from Nokia was pretty amazing as well and I'm sure it could have launched Linux phones into actual competitors to iOS and Android - if only Microsoft and Elop didn't manage to kill Linux at Nokia.
Unfortunately it was a big ball of mud in mismanagement.
One can only imagine what the product managers of like .NET think of all this.
At least in Windows 10, there was even still the occasional Windows 3.1 file picker hanging around in the really dusty locations
You know, like KDE Plasma in 2026.
But you don't. So it doesn't.
(I've pinned Visual Studio to the start menu.)
If I type "Visual Std" instead of "Visual Stu" it goes to the Bing results.
Alternatively it shows No results if you disable Bing in the Search settings found in the top right meatballs menu.
I also would expect fuzzy search by default instead of typos sending users to Bing.
> orrelates with missing the first letter off
Still, that shows an issue of using fuzzy search for Bing but not programs. There should be a precedent on local items. A typo is far more likely than a web search, especially when the web search is resulting in the intended application.
Did no one think of that feedback loop? That if the web search is suggesting an installed app that that installed app should be prioritized?
When I use the Windows key to open the Start menu I cannot reproduce this, as eg. Win + E opens the Explorer instead of the Start menu.
It does not appear on my machine as if this could possibly happen when opening the Start menu during regular use. Can you reproduce this on your machine?
---
Type something in the Start menu
Top right meatballs menu button
'Search settings'
'Let search apps show results' -> Off (or disable only Bing)
---
I don't know about the Home edition.
You can also launch that Settings page by running in powershell:
Start-Process "ms-settings:cortana-windowssearch"
Then I hear that now ctrl alt delete is a webview. Its difficult to believe. Do you have a reference?
how the OS implements what is displayed is irrelevant
windows has all kinds of virtualizations today, it can literally run web views in separate (invisible) VMs for security purposes
I've always wondered what things would be like the Microsoft break up went though, I really do think personal computing would be better off and the people involved would probably have even more money to boot
I've worked with all major GUI frameworks, from MFC to Qt, they all suck compared with React/Vue
There was a cross-platform QT tool, running on macOS, Windows, and Linux, for debugging and updating the firmware for an embedded platform solution. macOS & Linux both were quick and fast to code. Windows needed more work and also an abstracted write management system because the application was bringing the OS to screeching halt while writing the debug messages to a SQLite database. The write issue was only on Windows. HTML pages / reports were being saved into the SQLite database and viewable with-in the application. This was all packed into a single file executable so nothing and to be installed, just copied to the computer and ran.
Often low-end hardware is sold in product solutions and frameworks like QT are better suited to make the end user happy with load and response time than HTML5. The only reason I find bloated frameworks being used on such hardware is because the developer only understood one programing language and one UI framework. The former developer who's job I took over jumped ship because he did not want to learn WPF and only knew WinForms.
QT, HTML5, React, WinForms, Gtk ... are all tools in a tool box and each has a proper usage. Hell, if I ever make an iPhone based application I will be learning Swift and the Apple frameworks for such a task.
I remember when people argued that because the time spent running an app was so much greater than the time spent developing it that one should be more conscientious about a user's time than a developer's.
After all, wasting a minute of time from 20 million users is 38 man-years of lost life. Doing that just to save a developer a week or a month is ethically troubling.
Of course, people also upgraded their computers a lot less frequently and you'd publish minimum machine requirements for software which probably made it easier to make such arguments as you'd also lose customers if software was slow or had minimum hardware requirements a lot of people didn't have.
That largely went out the window with web developers where users were just as likely to blame browser makers or their ISP for poor performance. Now with app developers and OS makers doing it, I guess there's just so many users at this point that losing a few with older hardware just doesn't matter.
Every single web or mobile app does his own custom thing nowadays. As a user I couldn't care less how it's implemented, what I want consistency in behavior and style across the board.
It feels like this has been completely lost, even on platforms like mac where consistency used to be important.
I'd take MFC everything over random behavior if I could.
There are two kinds of consistency: across apps within a platform and across platforms within the same app. As someone who uses multiple platforms regularly, I have forever been annoyed when eg keyboard shortcuts change when I switch to a different computer, especially when I’m using the same app.
Apps like Discord, Spotify and VSCode are consistently the most pleasurable to use because they are largely the same.
For a unique piece of hardware like the old iPod, it made more sense to do your special custom UX as a unified product. But we’re talking about general purpose computers. The ”platform” shouldn’t be special imo, it should simply be predictable and stay out of the way. They mostly provide the same thing, like copy paste and maximizing a window, yet have different controls. This differentiation adds no value, at least to me.
Even the most complete “UI frameworks” on the web are full of holes, leaving you to build a patchwork monster out of a laundry list of third party widgets (all of which themselves are full of shortcomings and concessions) or build your own.
As an aside, this gripe isn’t exclusive to the web. It’s a problem with many others such as Windows App SDK (aka WinUI) and Flutter, among others. At least for the things I build, they’re unsuitable at best.
Late millennials and gen Z have been spoiled by declarative, reactive frameworks that work identically whether you're doing a local UI or the Web, and the tools (for example Figma) that have grown up around these frameworks. Using C++, Objective-C, or even Swift will be just fine for a personal project, but if you're talking something that needs to be maintained and refined over the long term by a team, you will have a much worse time finding people competent in those languages than in JavaScript+React+Electron.
This is also one of the reasons behind rewriting everything in Rust: C is so dangerous, people who don't already know it inside and out are unwilling to touch it. Virtually all of the younger system developers are already working in Rust, and would vastly prefer it over working in C given the choice, so keeping a C project maintained has gotten a whole lot harder.
I'd love to know where you get your statistics from.
FYI, as an anecdote, I am 'younger', in the sense of 'only recently joined the workforce', and I write 100+ lines of C and C++ a day, both at work and in side projects. Haven't touched Rust once, although I would like to get into it.
And funnily, the one UI framework I did use at work is Avalonia, which is strongly inspired by Windows Presentation Foundation.
Declarative UI has its upsides, but it’s hardly a panacea. There are places where it’s a straightforward dramatic improvement and then others where it’s an awkward contortion at best. Reactivity can be great but works in imperative setups too.
The explosion of popularity of front end web frameworks comes down almost entirely to two things: accessibility and commodity talent. It has a low bar to entry and JS+React is the closest the industry has come yet to achieving its undying dream of cheap, easily replaceable, interchangeable developers. In most other aspects it’s objectively worse than alternatives.
If you need a lot of graphical elements and customization to get a look and feel that matches what you want, then yeah, nothing really beats html/css/js for both it's flexibility and available ecosystem.
But if what you need is an application with a button that does magic things when you push it, or a text box or table that allows for customization of the text color, then all the other types of UX frameworks work just fine. You just can't expect to do something like make a pretty chart.
> OS manufacturer can’t be bothered to interact with their own UI libraries to build native UIs
Now we are talking about entire apps being built with that stuff, down to the window border (or lack of it). It's impossible to have a consistent looking and working OS with this approach. It's impossible to share code between these things and the actual native apps, and often things have to be written from scratch and end up using 10x memory than the native solution.
Not very useful because you quickly realize you mostly obscure your desktop with actual applications you want to use on your computer.
With SwiftUI you’ve been able to pick and choose where to integrate it over the years, it’s not like you had to go whole-hog.
I use both os daily and neither is remotely laggy, looks nice, supports all the hardware and software and I don't have to be surprised or spend hours downloading drivers to make it work.
And that's just one example. I curse Microsoft every day.
Newer version of Windows seem to add latency were there was none before.
Yet somehow I am OK with gnome shell.
But if they don’t use web tech it would be too expensive to build the start menu in a way that works cross platform!
Oh wait
It doesn't help that their own UI libraries are unfinished, unpolished, hot garbage.
I commend on using React, though. Like it or hate it, React is the closest to one true framework for everything.
I am considering writing software specifically to feed random junk jnto Microsoft's telemetry cloud. I will call it "fusk-MS" and it will send random searches to Bing and fake screenshots of a linux desktop to copilot ten times a second until Microsoft stops acting like such a jerk.
I honestly think that has way less to do with Microsoft, more of a representation of "software engineering" practices these days.
For example, Gnome shell has bunch of javascript in it, GTK has layout and styling defined in some flavour of CSS, etc.
I'm of opinion if you start writing OS userland in either javascript or python (or both), you should be fired on the spot, but I don't make the shots.
Most technical decisions aren't really driven by what makes a better end-user experience or a better product, it's mostly defined by convenience and familiarity of substandard software developers - with mostly and primarily web-slop background.
Compared to Windows it's of course absolutely unreal.
KDE Plasma, which is in my opinion the most advanced desktop environment is written in Qt QML which is JavaScript. There are advantages to that over C++, namely your session won't simply crash.
(While you can use some JavaScript from QML, the application still have a C++ core. QML applications can still crash. There is no DOM with QML, no browser overhead)
Neglecting the fact that almost everyone else is doing similar things.
> For example, Gnome shell has bunch of javascript in it, GTK has layout and styling defined in some flavour of CSS, etc.
What GTK is doing isn't really any different than how many UI framework work and have done so for quite a while now.
Almost every desktop UI toolkit/library/framework in the past 15-20 years has the following:
- Markup interface for defining the layout. If they don't have that they have a declarative way of defining the UI.
- Some sort of bindings for popular scripting language that hook into native code.
- Some of styling language that isn't that different from CSS.
This has been the norm for quite some time now. It works reasonably well.
Futhermore there isn't much difference between what desktop developers are doing and what web developers are doing.
> I'm of opinion if you start writing OS userland in either javascript or python (or both), you should be fired on the spot, but I don't make the shots.
Why? I find Gnome works really well on Linux. I have a pretty nice desktop environment after adding two extensions (Dash To Dock and App Indicators). Gnome runs well on relatively ancient hardware I own (2011 Dell E6410) with a garbage GPU (it isn't OpenGL 3.3 compliant). It actually performs a lot better than some other DEs that are 100% native.
JavaScript is indeed a slow language. However in Gnome that isn't the bottleneck. People have been making UIs with JScript (basically JavaScript) using WSH back in the 90s on Windows 98.
> Most technical decisions aren't really driven by what makes a better end-user experience or a better product, it's mostly defined by convenience and familiarity of substandard software developers - with mostly and primarily web-slop background.
What makes a better end user experience has nothing to do with any of this. There has to be an incentive to create a good end user experience and there simply isn't in the vast majority of cases.
In many cases it doesn't matter really what the tech behind something is. Most popular programmings and associated frameworks all work reasonably well on machines that are over a decade old. I am running Discord on a 15 year machine dual core laptop processor and it works "ok".
So this sort of complaining about "modern devs" I've been hearing about for almost 20 years now. The issues I've faced with doing quality work has been almost always to do with how projects are (mis)-managed.
The software industry has always had more juniors than seniors so this issue of juniors calling the shots is not a new one but it does feel like it's been getting worse and worse... Now it's basically AI slop vibe coders calling the shots about coding best-practices.
It is inconsequential, until it isn't. In front of me I've got a 2017 lenovo thinkpad running the latest Fedora+KDE, as well as a 2025 HP elitebook running "last corporate-friendly-stable version of W11". I can pop open the lenovo, key in my session password and hit enter, and I'm instantly productive, with shortcuts like meta+E giving me a working file explorer within milliseconds. On the Windows' side, there are several seconds of delay between typing my password and the on-screen feedback. Once finally unlocked, I've got a laggy environment where OS-essentials like the start menu and file explorers take whole seconds to render and respond.
It's a shame, if you ask me, that a dozen-or-so CPU and "general hardware" generations between those two devices got to waste due to poor software engineering and practices. And I'm not even talking about quality/reliability which is another sore point for Windowses of late.
I even ran Windows 10 on Thinkpad x240 a couple of years ago, it also ran fine.
I think this is a real thing and I think a combination of MS demanding everyone get new hardware and Valve really polishing a lot of linux has gone a long way to get non-technical users to start seriously considering linux.
It's a huge added bonus that old hardware simply flies with linux. I have a 5 year old laptop that feels about 10x more responsive since I killed the windows install and put linux on it.
And I know that laptop will continue to fly because, unlike windows, it's never going to get any sort of serious bloatware added on as I update it.
Given how rough and uncertain the economy is, this creates a large group of people who can't or aren't comfortable upgrading their computer, but at the same time don't want to be stuck on EOL Windows 10 forever either.
I fact, Linux is much easier to run on somewhat older hardware because drivers are often a bit slow to land and Ubuntu and its derivatives always lag in kernel versions.
Older hardware becoming more valuable because price hikes doubly benefit Linux.
It’s literally the ads and bloatware. Windows is horrible unless you are technical enough to strategically disable the bloatware, and keep on disabling it as the updates continually reenable it. And if you are technical enough to disable it then Linux isn’t a problem.
Microsoft really is enterprise, cloud, and GitHub / AI tools. Windows for personal users is harvesting as much cash as possible from boomers and gamers, but the gamers are leaving en masse now. Software professionals only use macOS or Linux unless they are a MS shop that has to use Windows stack.
It is an incredible shift for those of us who have been around forever. But it’s a true look at how impossible things shift, bit by bit, until all of a sudden it all washes away. Never believe the tech cos on top today can’t be beat. It can and will happen someday
I hope more companies and MBAs open their eyes to this: that the long term cost of user-hostile changes is negative compared to respecting users and building good products.
Also currently it helps to stand out from the sea of crap products.
Play the long game. Make good products. Bring joy and positive experience to peoples lives. Sleep well at night.
What we’re seeing instead is open-source becoming the real alternative. People used to look for other proprietary tools, but now open-source options are getting good enough, and more people are building personal software that fits their needs instead of bloated do-everything apps.
That’s the shift. Open-source is rising, and I don’t think these companies can reverse course fast enough.
Indeed quarterly earnings make people think short term, disregard long term. Focus on growth above all else
I would say that’s absolutely the most normal gamer way of playing PC games. As someone who is mostly given up on playing games on a computer and prefer consoles, I’ve thought of doing the same thing.
I agree it’s really impressive that lots of people have decided to try Linux, far more than I remember ever before.
But I’m worried this is “the moment“. Possibly the best shot that’s gonna happen for a long time. And if people find things aren’t as ready as they think from what they hear they’re going to be burned and they’re not coming back. The next time around not only will they not come, they’ll push other people away from trying.
I don’t know if we’ve reached that magical inflection point or not. I think some people are using rosy glasses again though. The real momentum has never been this strong. But it’s not a done deal.
But one of my senses is that the sort of games that really benefited from a desktop system--primarily Windows--like serious simulations and resource allocation games are increasingly fringe.
Certainly there are games on Linux today but I also wonder if a lot of people won't decide, as you say, that consoles are just easier.
Still there are a huge number of games from indies or small publishers that may not make it to console but would still work fantastically with a controller. Or maybe they’re successful and they will make it over, you just don’t want to wait the two years.
Those kind of games are the ones that make me consider getting a Steam Deck.
As I wrote on HN just yesterday, I've been working on the Linux desktop for 20 years and the momentum has never been higher. 2026 will be fun.
Thing is that explicitly asking for money works, it gets results. If you can get people to pay money to watch you screaming at video games on Twitch, you can definitely get people to pay money for working on useful software.
That, plus (what feels like) a lot of recent advances in Linux. When I tried it... 2-3ish years ago? I recall e.g. fractional display scaling being basically nonfunctional. But when I tried again early 2025, it pretty much Just Worked (arguably even better than it did on windows), I just had to manually enable wayland. Pretty sure even that's just the default nowadays.
Which basically sums up my personal windows -> linux pipeline: bought a steam deck, was impressed at how well it ran my steam library; had my old laptop finally die on me, ran my life off the steam deck for a while; decided to eventually build a new machine, and figured I might as well try installing linux from the get-go. Everything worked fine on the first try, and I ended up not even installing windows.
certainly within my friend groups, I'm seeing more and more people entertaining the idea of making the switch as well. Admittedly, that's primarily "tech-savvy" folks though.
Proton was good, but SteamDeck did 2 things:
* informed bigger public that hey, it is good enough for vast majority of games/gamers in the public eye
* more importantly, *made developers care* about their stuff working on Steam Deck. And if it works on Steam Deck, very good chance it will work on <generic linux distro> just fine
I had Dillo for a web browser, a stripped down version of VLC that could play 360p Youtube videos without issue, downloaded via Youtube-DL. I had XMMS which looked just like Winamp, and Sega/Nintendo emulation and even Duke Nukem 3D. For programs I had epub/pdf/djview readers, xpaint which is like classic MS Paint, feh as a hyperlightweight all purpose image viewer and background manager, a super lightweight RSI break popup program, and even a fully functional web server stack. It also had a window manager (JWM) that handled multiple desktops more intuitively and effortlessly than Windows does now.
Good for checking which photo of a dozen is clearest, while zoomed in 800%.
- macOS is kind of crapifying, with Liquid Glass UI, iCloud services pushed down your throat… - Windows 11… - (some) Europeans are getting concerned about their complete lack of sovereignty on the tech stack, and Linux is one way to reclaim a small part of it. - LLM agents like Claude code have lowered the bar so much for any setup operation and bash commands.
All in all, it seems like a good time for Linux to broaden a bit its adoption.
Now, two in five PCs worldwide are running Windows 10, an unsuppoted OS. What are the user's options? Either buy a new PC, switch to Mac or run Linux.
[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/2025-could-finally-be-the-year...
When prices are going nuts and the economy is tanking the option that doesn't cost you money starts to look a lot more appealing, and for some the first isn't even an option; they're completely priced out of the new market for the foreseeable future.
I predict a rise in antivirus company share prices.
If Apple do make the rumoured cheap A-series based MacBook, it could be a hit.
My "year of the Linux desktop" was in 2010, because even then everything was much, much faster on Ubuntu. (It helps major browsers were shipping 64-bit versions for Linux only, but Minecraft simply did not run on my laptop under Windows).
Does anyone else feel kind of sick (something like pity?) when they see people using Windows 11? Right click menus which have a loading spinner, advertisements littered throughout, and headlines from right-wing tabloids spammed in news widgets.
These past six years have been absolutely bonkers incredible for Linux, and it can all be attributed to Microsoft shooting themselves in the head with Windows. Proton work started after Windows 8 and really became usable in late 2019. Now we're seeing something again with Windows 11. It's awesome, hope it sticks.
It can’t all be attributed to Microsoft. There have been huge efforts by many parties to make this happen. Folks working on the Kernel, desktop environments, distros, applications, tooling, advocacy, and more.
I believe people who say they are being pushed away from ms because of disillusionment with windows 11. But there also needs to be someone to pick up the ball after it was dropped — and those people deserve equal if not more credit
Microsoft is one of Valve's direct competitors and Valve is totally dependent on Microsoft. Among the notoriously poorly-received changes in Windows 8, Microsoft also started to clamp down on who can run software. Valve saw the writing on the walls and released their first Steam Machines. But those flopped due to the state of Linux gaming at the time, they started pouring resources into Proton, which had the distinction from WINE in that they would develop Linux-specific patches.
For sure, Valve would have nothing if WINE hadn't already done the bulk of the work, if Vulkan didn't exist, if Linux didn't exist, etc. But there's a world where Microsoft decided not to rock the boat with Windows, and in that world, Linux gamers would almost exclusively be dual booting.
MS fucked up
I'd argue that its drips and papercuts all over. Everything is trying to extract rent, and that makes things unreliable enough that even basic users are starting to notice.
Um, can't connect to the Internet? Nope, you can't play a game on your machine, and you may not even be able to log in. Service hiccup? Booted from whatever you were doing because we can't extort your if we leave data on your machine. And, oh, if you have the nerve to complain, you ungrateful serf, we will kickban you with no recourse. etc.
And this is before we even bring the AI bukkake into the picture ...
---
I had a job interview yesterday, which happened via Google Meet.
Even though I use my desktop Linux workstation and Firefox 99% of the time for everything, my first instinct was to do this interview on a MacBook and Chrome, to avoid surprises and not look unprofessional if something doesn't work, which has happened in the past. Last year, when I was asked to share the screen during a daily, I had to say "um, I'm sorry, Zoom and desktop sharing don't work on my system."
But I thought I'd first do a test on my workstation, just to see if maybe I shouldn't be concerned anymore. I was sceptical.
The ideal scenario was that on my standard GNOME 48 / Wayland / PipeWire desktop I'd be able to use Firefox for this call, and AirPods, a Logitech webcam, and desktop sharing (5K ultrawide scaled at 125%) would just work with no tweaks whatsoever.
And it did!
I've been using Linux on the desktop for over 20 years (on and off, but mostly on) and I know how to hold my Linux systems, but the situation with Bluetooth audio and desktop sharing in previous years has been... spotty. I was less worried about AirPods — I switched to PipeWire ~3 years ago and so I know Linux audio has been rock-solid and pretty much solved already. But desktop sharing used to be hit-or-miss, highly dependent on whether you used X11 or Wayland, further complicated by the use of Flatpaks.
Since my test went well, I did the interview on the desktop machine. It went smoothly, with no surprises.
Therefore, I announce 2025 as the Year of the Linux desktop :)
I just bought a laptop that came with Fedora installed. This isn't anything new, but what really blew me away is that everything... just worked. No tinkering. No alternative modules built from source (hopefully with a good DKMS script). Everything... just worked. I'd blocked out a few hours to get everything working in a satisfactory state and... I had nothing to do, really.
And when I say everything I mean EVERYTHING, not just the features that were significant to my own use cases. Mind-blowing, if you think about it.
For a laptop user who likes to game, you’ll definitely encounter some issues based on my experience. Better than it was 2 years ago, but it’s not a seamless experience (laptops!!) that you’d expect from posts like these.
For a Linux savvy user, it’s definitely worth the switch. I haven’t had any ads in months and it’s magical
Things are improving, and we should see this fixed in the next years I assume. This is the good thing about it, Linux will probably be fixing all annoying bugs in the next few years.
I had the same problem on my new Yoga laptop with Fedora and an Intel BE200 Wi-Fi card.
The only exception is when we got a really new batch of Lenovo P1 laptops for work, and the patches likely were not fully merged yet. So as long as you’re not getting the first batch it is generally pretty good.
Turned me off Fedora completely.
Tried two other distros on the same machine right afterwards with no problems though.
I've done more than a handful of major version updates since then, and almost don't bother to backup any more.
Beside that though, I'm happy to have left Windows behind completely.
This is true. I've been using Ubuntu since 2006, but still see issues with
Wifi: Ubuntu 22 didn't work out of the box with a 2014 macbook air
Bluetooth: maddening trying to set "listening" mode instead of headset mode on JBL earphones - it seems to choose randomly every time it connects, and the setting isn't exposed in any UI
Sleep: I don't think I've ever seen sleep/suspend working reliably on a Linux laptop, to the point I don't know the difference between the two. I have one thinkpad which never wakes from sleep, and also never fully shuts down on system shutdown without a long press of the power button.
I accept all this so that I don't have to wait seconds for basic UI things to happen, like switching virtual desktop (osx) and opening the application launcher (windows).
This year I got a T14s Gen6 AMD as a replacement, and it's essentially unusable on Debian-based distros (Ubuntu, Mint), but works fine with Fedora and with Windows.
On Ubuntu and Mint, X just locks up every 80 seconds or so, and I have to hard-reboot it (or switch ttys and restart X). Nothing in syslog, nothing in dmesg, nothing in X.org.log to show what might be going on.
I have never had any issues with any Linux-distro regarding WiFi. Most hardware I have used has been largely compatible even. Maybe I have just been lucky, but it seems there’s millions of us who are really lucky these days.
What has also changed from 2010’s is that the documentation like Arch wiki is a lot better. You can also ask an LLM to help you configure things - obvs the docs are better and safer - so if and when you do have a problem, there’s actually sources to help you fix it.
This has mostly been solved by either putting them in the nonfree repos or just the fact that WiFi hardware vendors aren't using such stuff anymore.
I still remember pulling firmware blobs for my Broadcom cards, then it magically worked fine. It was far from trivial and I think that's what caused a lot of people who tried Linux on laptops in early 2000s to turn away.
I can't remember the last time I tried a distro that didn't just work on a random computer with a random wifi but it has been several years now.
Nvidia cards on the other hand...last year I had to try about 10 distros before I found something that wasn't a huge pain in the ass.
Now I have a Thinkpad T440p with a GeForce GT 730M dGPU which NVIDIA no longer provide driver for newer Linux kernels, so I have to use slower nouveau driver.
Ah, something never change.
Back when X was Xfree86 and you were required to create the X configuration without internet.
It has improved greatly over the years. When I was using it relatively regularly in the mid-00's it still took a lot of effort to get everything to work.
But long-time users being amazed that buying a brand new linux laptop in 2026 'just works' says a lot about how far behind it is/was. PC's that 'just work' have been available for 40 years. That should be the starting point for any shipping product.
But that's the kind of product they're shipping, because that's the kind of people they're employing, and that's the kind of decisions they're allowed to make. It permeates everything.
Additionally there is no reliable mechanism to do so as doing it through Task Scheduler causes a race condition - will your script be allowed to run and finish before S0 sleep cuts power to it? You can not be sure.
Additionally if you got cornered into making an online account Task Scheduler doesn't even work with that reliably (for task that require privileges like turning off BT on lock and turning it on on unlock) so then you have disable the online account Microsoft manipulated you to make. Of course the failure is silent so you have to discover all that by yourself.
That is a a driver but Windows can also crash during S0 sleep because of its own updater failing to update some random app (like Microsoft Phone w/e that is).
On Linux it's just not an issue. The script runs on events and is guaranteed to finish. Random updates at random times won't happen either.
It was faster to rg to search files, drop into WSL and run find for file name searches. The start menu was laggy, explorer was laggy (open up a folder with a couple dozen OGG files and it won't render for a solid minute). Mystery memory usage from privileged processes I had little control over. Once I realized that the one game I play (Overwatch) ran on Linux I decided to swap back.
I installed Linux Mint earlier this year and I've been extremely happy. The memory consumption is stable and low, and if something is broken I have the control to fix it. It just feels so much less hostile. This is largely possible thanks to the work Steam has done with Proton. The last real barrier is kernel level anti-cheat which prevented me from trying out this years Call of Duty. Oh well!
Fixed via the Everything app - instant search of any file in a nice resizable/sortable table
> if something is broken I have the control to fix it.
Instant search doesn't exist, how do you fix it?
This continuously drives me crazy on Windows and macOS. I am befuddled at the number of times where I'm searching for a top level subdirectory that starts with 'foo' but the search bar spins and spins..
Eventually I get fed up and just sort by name and perform an alphabetical visual search in meat-space.
I'm a SE for 25 years now, sticking with C#. Microsoft always did great tech platforms and left the missing 20% to the developers. Look at the .net framework (the old one), microsoft windows until win11, office until 2025, and even Excel that can't open csv files because the delimeter is a region setting.
On one side I hated this attitude, on the other side it allowed and enabled developers to get their own business running - see jetbrains resharper functionality - visual studio up until 2024 was a mess without it...
I have found Beyond Compare to be very good on Linux, even on large files/directories.
Well said. I wonder what the kernel team thinks about it.
I have zero issues with the platform day in and day out with heavy workloads like Pro Tools and Unreal Engine devkit. Games run without stutter and issue, all my features are snappy, Explorer loads instantly, etc. Even search is performant and gives decent results. I have tweaked a few settings but nothing you can't find in settings menus.
I'm not sure a lot of people having issues with pretty damn stable platform are going to have a better experience in something they have zero familiarity with and isn't exactly going to be intuitive when things go sideways, as they most undoubtedly will.
There is likely too big of a gap in "terminology".
For example, the file explorer startup is so "Instant" that even Microsoft officially added an option to preload the app to fix the delay. But if you don't notice / don't appreciate real instant, then sure, you won't understand the complaints. (or maybe your hardware masks it well enough)
Similarly, if you've never used Everything or better file manager for search, you might get used to the bad search results and call them "decent" since you're not aware how awesome it can be
Win 11 seems fine to me. I do see Copilot appearing everywhere. I don't see ads from MS at all, though- sometimes my vendor driver-management software asks me if I was to extend my warranty. Not Win11 fault, though. Start menu seems fine, phone integration is nice, OS runs very stable (in the very early days of using Linux 20y ago I marveled at how much more stable it was than Win98! That gap is gone now as far as I can tell).
My suspicion: I am paying for M365 (or whatever they call it now) and so they don't advertise it (or anything?) to me. I don't see CandyCrush or other random things added to my machine. All seems OK.
I've read that Win12 will be subscription-based. Maybe I am personally already there. For now, M365 offers me good value- I use MS Office and OneDrive. But if this changes I can see the equation balance shifting and I will then change platforms again.
TMI, I left MacOS because of Gatekeeper and the inability to repair hardware. Before that I left Linux for work interoperability and regressions I saw on my personal mobile hardware. Neither were "bad", really, I have experienced different trade-offs among the three choices I have used. For now, Win 11 is working just fine for me, with no fuss.
> I don't see ads from MS at all
You can only pick one.
I personally run win11 for gaming, android for media consumption and proxmox for homelab and I think all of these systems are fine as is. They serve their purpose well enough.
My prediction is that steamOS (when it is released) will end up being the only mainstream Linux desktop because of its corporate backing. It would be interesting to see desktop Linux mimicking the android ecosystem, where different vendors provide a different skin on top of SteamOS.
Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Pop!, Deepin (and the list goes on) all have corporate backing. Steam is a well-known consumer brand though, so that might make a difference.
I set up a lot of PCs and what has astounded me is how much less work it takes. Unlike with Windows, most of the defaults are fine. I don't have to scour through all the settings after a fresh install. I only need to install half as many apps. I don't have to run powershell scripts to debloat everything. And I don't have to worry about updates undoing all the changes I've made in the future.
It had Catalina on it and was completely unusable. Hovering on anything would bring up the spinner which would take a couple of minutes to resolve itself.
I tried reinstalling the OS, which didn't help. The top recommendation was to revert to Mojave.
Finally, after three days of struggle, I gave up and installed Linux Mint.
The difference is absolutely unbelievable. Even heavy applications like LibreOffice and Zoom are snappy.
Apple makes such good hardware. I felt really sad about the state of their software compatibility with older machines.
So, I don't know about the rest of the world, but I know one more person will be using Linux in 2026!
Due to word being too buggy, I switched to libre office in windows. Local outlook was also too buggy in windows, I ended up running the web version. Switched to vscode b/c VS was to buggy and slow.
Teams works better in macos. Web version of teams is ok in Linux, you don’t want to run the native app in windows, it’s a resource hog written as a web app anyway.
Dotnet and powershell (pwsh) actually works better in both macos and in Linux, than in windows. Not a little better, but much better, that ecosystem is very stable and reliable.
And azure has of course no dependency on any local windows, on the contrary, dealing with remote systems are easier in Linux, particular if you accessing remote Linux systems as well.
Then I realized there was no reason to run windows. At all. It will only drag you down when it comes to productivity, it’s an awful os, filled with malware and other shit.
Pros: The best development experience you can have. Everything is native linux. There is no beating that. This of course will be a problem if hobbies/work use windows. I've never been a windows person. So I've never missed it. Power and peripherals work on the system76 seamlessly.
Cons: Battery life. Runs out in about 2.5 hrs but its an AMD not an ARM.
I did run linux on a tower exclusively while I did my PhD. Did everything on it - code, writing my thesis in LaTeX, store data, connect to dropbox for backup, watch netflix, etc.
You're not missing much by dumping windows.
Damn, even my several year old Intel + Nvidia MSI GE66 can match that. Why is it so bad?
There is a desktop webview of PhotoPea, but it's not the same.
Picking hardware with good support helps a lot. I would expect system76 to be a safe bet though (but I haven't tried their hardware).
(it uses wasm)
One of the big barriers to having more people use Linux is having the software packages they use to actually do work available on the platform. Image editing is the most popular software type that isn't really available on Linux with an equivalent to the commercial package that everyone uses.
Mac OS X and Aqua wasn't very well received either at launch.
A similar thing happened with the flat design of iOS 7.
Apple's pattern is initially going overboard with a new design and then scaling it back slowly like a sculptor.
I think they're happy with this method, even if things miss at first the big changes usually create a lot of hype and excitement for the masses.
The vast majority of users don't care about the finer things, Apple knows that the nerds can sweat it out until they straighten things out at which point everyone is happy in a hero's journey kind of way.
I just hope this pattern stays true and that this isn't an inflection point.
The blocker for Linux for me as someone who wants some level of reliability has always been fiddling with low level config, but now with Claude Code, low level config appeals!
I decided as long as Rocket League (Steam) runs fine, I'll stick with Linux. It did, without any tweaking (other than telling it to use Proton because, technically, it has native Linux support, just not online play), and it used to require a ton of weird tweaking.
Every game I cared about in my Steam library worked too, way more than when I tried in 2020, also without any tweaking. So did MC Java edition.
The machine has a RTX 3080, which I almost didn't buy, because I've had issue with Nvidia on Linux in the past, but haven't had to do a single tweak this time.
- No sudo, or at least no conflict between "Sudo is dangerous and can break your system" / "You need sudo to do routine things"
- Executable compatibility across distro versions and distros
- No CLI required to install software
- Lag-free pen experience
- Good touch support
- Less fragile. I shouldn't have to worry about the PC booting up into a no-GUI terminal after I installed something, or edited a file. (See point 1; don't make me edit system files to do routine stuff like communicate with a USB device without sudo, if they can break the system)
- Focus on speed, and clawing back the performance losses that have been accumulating in all OSs over the years
- Let me open an application by double-clicking it
Bonus: Something like PowerToys. I recognize this diverges from core OS functionality.
- There is nothing wrong with sudo - or to be precise, it is good thing that administrative operations are explicit. And sudo is still less annoying than Windows "admin prompt" anyway.
- Why do you care? Use apt install, yum install or apk add, whatever your distro supports.
- It is not required, there are GUI managers, but again - why?
- Got me there. I don't use pen.
- Used touch on ThinkPad some years ago, it just worked, maybe depends on the laptop?
- Until 15 years ago this was true, but I haven't seen this happen since then. Debian here if it matters.
- I'm typing this on a 15 years old desktop (with NVME, admittedly) and it boots and feels faster than a new MacBook Pro I am testing. Linux accumulated much less, if any, performance losses. I agree that Windows and Mac both became bloated.
- I think doubleclick is the default way, at least in xfce? Or I might be missing what you mean. That said, I use keyboard shortcuts mostly as I try to avoid mouse for this.
With all that said, of course it will not look and feel the same as Windows. It is a different OS, with different priorities. I like it better than both Windows and MacOS, but maybe it's because I found the combination that fits me (Debian + XFCE). Maybe take a look at KDE and XFCE?
In the case of Linux usability desires, I will make the cautious conclusion that there is a group of people who consider Linux part of their identity, and any desire for improvement or shortcoming is mentally a personal challenge. I am just a human using computers as a tool, and don't have a desire to play politics on this subject.
I think the "it's fine" / "works for me" / "Actually this is a good thing" / "Why don't you just" replies like this are an obstacle to improvement, but is often overcome.
Agreed - and I find the same thing.
Distilling these processes to terminal commands has the highest potential for usability and efficiency gains.
This seems very odd ... a quick one-liner install process is by far the simplest and most efficient way to install a piece of software ...
What other fragility and unnecessary complexity comes along with graphical installation tools ?
Is this a pain point for non-technical users you might prepare this system for ? Who do you have in mind when you specify this ?
A: There is a UI with 2 buttons. How many degrees of freedom is that?
B: There is a text prompt, which accepts any number of unicode characters. How many degrees is that?Hardware: HX370, 128G RAM, Radeon 860M iGPU, Radeon RX7700S dGPU, Xbox Wireless Cntroller, 2T + 8T SSD storage
Software (as of today, still making additions and refinements): Gentoo/OpenRC (I don't like systemd), Kernel 6.12.58 with additional module for the Xbox controller, Pipewire+EasyEffects 8, KDE Plasma 6.5.4/Wayland, Steam
Experience: KDE runs pretty stable, and only has the things I really need (and not the things a vendor thinks I need).
The first game I benchmarked today was Doom (2016), which runs smoothly on 90-120 fps on high settings.
The second game I benchmarked today was Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (2024) running on ~56fps on recommended settings on the 7700.
The one game I tried today and could not get to run properly was Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl. I suspect that, given the many positives on ProtonDB, that's mainly either a configuration or Proton issue. I'll do some more research and give it another try in the near future. Right now performance drops to 5 fps immediately after starting a new game, and the CPU running on 600Mhz maximum when starting the game on Proton Experimental.
For now I am quite happy with the results, and the fact that I likely finally am able to eject Windows out of my life.
If "it [Xubuntu] works like Windows" offended you, I'd like to point out that normies don't care about how operating system kernels are designed. Normies care about things like a start menu, and that the X in the corner closes programs. The interface is paramount for non-technical users.
I've run Linux almost everywhere (work machines excluded) outside of my main desktop/gaming rig for over 15 years, up until a year ago when I switched my desktop. My last Windows install is on my retro PC (98SE), and it'll stay that way, because changing that would ruin the nostalgia.
There will never be a “year of the Linux desktop” the same way that there has never been a “year of the Mac desktop”, it’s just a slow building of users over time anyway.
I think it's also maybe worth pointing out that "non-enthusiast desktop OS user" is a segment that is shrinking. A lot of the people that aren't going to Linux are just going to smartphones only rather than buy a new laptop for Win11.
But you raise a good point that some users will stop using windows without ever picking up another desktop os at all. Not many that don’t already not use desktops, but some for sure.
https://github.com/hahndorf/Set-Privacy
Still not the year of the Windows desktop.
" there simply is nothing for open source to copy but ux-decline" and that sentence rings like a bell of all the problems.
It’s painful seeing FOSS making some of the same mistakes as corporations
But, I mostly use command-line programs and write my own programs (and sometimes use older DOS programs, even though I have Linux), without emoji and without LLM, and also avoiding Unicode when I can, and without a desktop environment, etc.
I beg to differ. Tiling window managers like ion, ratpoison, dwm, et. al, and the simple and elegant tooling that accompany them are a wonderful example of UI innovation.
UI/UX designers who copy, and iterate on, infantile eye candy have only themselves to blame.
Windows 11 UI and spyware are so bad, that Windows 10 is where my 35 years of using Windows as my main OS has ended.
My workstation runs Kinoite[1], an immutable/atomic version of Fedora. I started with Fedora 38, and now am running 43. Flawless major-release upgrades. I develop using distrobox[2] (pet containers) on podman. It "Just Works".
Nearly 99% of my Steam library is playable on Fedora too. Many games even have native Linux support these days - the rest run under Proton. The only games that won't play have windows-only kernel-level anti-cheat. For some of those games, it's a developer choice (there's apparently a checkbox to enable Linux support on EasyAntiCheat - and some don't "check" it).
I use Flatpaks to install many GUI apps, such as FreeCAD, KiCad, Darktable, Steam, Reaper, and a lot more.
It's a great, extremely stable system.
Because support doesn't mean full features. It's like saying iPad supports Microsoft Excel. At some point it's the same name for different software.
I think especially because it's under Proton, that means it's the Windows version of the game you're weakening to anti-cheat too. Even Valve's own VAC has issues running under Proton.
An initiative like Omarchy got a lot of traction just by "picking one" of all the infinite options available, writing decent documentation for how it all works in Omarchy specifically, and having the whole thing install in minutes.
Omarchy and tiling VM's are not for everyone but I think the principles are great, and can surely be applied to other DE's as well.
I think linux people tend to forget how important battery life is on a laptop
Intel claims Panther Lake will be even better, and we should be seeing results within days as there should be Panther Lake desktop released during CES this week.
The big "issue" with Linux on non-server workloads imo is a lack of testing like this - which is completely understandable. Afiak Microsoft runs millions of automated tests on various hardware configurations _a day_.
Intel does something similar for the Linux kernel, which no doubt explains the relative stability of Linux server vs Desktop (servers are running far less "OS level" software in general in day to day use than the desktop).
The desktop experience itself needs more automated testing. There are so many bugs/regressions which I've noticed in eg gnome which should have been caught by e2e testing - I do try to report them when I see them.
Doing a bit more digging there seems to be some basic e2e testing for gnome ran nightly but currently most tests are failing https://openqa.gnome.org/tests/12128.
This isn't a criticism at all btw, it's quite boring and resource intensive work for a project like gnome to do. I hope soon some large corp decides to go all in on realLinux desktop (not ChromeOS) and can devote resources to this.
It's not the default on Debian, but once you install it, you can choose it next time you log in.
(Similarities to smoking cessation are neither coincidental nor intentional, but unavoidable.)
But, with that said, I started seriously using Linux for the first time in 2025. I bounce between Debian, Windows 11, and MacOS, and Debian is probably the most refreshing to use. I don’t find Windows 11 as oppressive as other seem to, but I have turned off most of what people cite as the issues. I find MacOSs Liquid Glass redesign to be more aggressively bad.
So you debloated your windows but at any update you have to spin your wheels and try to remove any crap they put back in. At any time there’s the possibility you can no longer remove x or y. The vast majority don’t have the energy to play this game or don’t know how to.
I think where Microsoft is playing with fire is that while most users will not care about some of these changes power users do. And the 5% of power users ultimately make the decisions and provide the recommendations for the other 95%. With so many apps and SAAS services going web or web app only there will be less and less reason to need to stick with Windows and that is where Microsoft will start to lose control.
My wife is the average computer user and has used Linux apps for years and never opened a terminal once.
I agree, under a managed setup scenario where a user is only really going to use a web browser and a few apps. Linux is just fine.
Glad we agree on casual users. She uses Chrome and only 2 apps, same as when she was on Windows. Would you agree that probably most of the world is made up of casual users?
My wife rocks Arch and could not care less.
My wife has no idea what a terminal is and does not care - she rocks Arch and has no idea what that means. The people that attend my uncle's PC clinic to have their "Win 10 that won't run Win 11" converted to Linux don't care either.
My Dad's PC will shortly be running Linux after I've taken him through MSOffice -> Libre Office + Scribus + (Evolution||Thunderbird).
I started off my early IT career as a trainer - I once did a day of DTP with Quark Express where I was given the floppies the night before. When I hear that Linux (actually LO etc) is incapable of doing whatever, I soon find that a deep discussion about what constitutes "incapable" generally turns into a training session.
For example I often hear about documents that apparently LO can't handle. That normally ends up with me teaching (proselytizing!) about how to use styles properly or even the real basics such as the four tab forms (L/R/C/decimal). Then we might segue into spreadsheets ... ahh, you'll want a array formula there ... "a what?" and off we go again.
Now, I have wandered off track here somewhat but I'm noting the other "not ready" convo that will often happen after we have covered how to find your mouse pointer or why Windows seems to still have two Control Panels and at least three half arsed IP stacks.
I do actually have a fondness for Windows, having used it since v2.0 at school in 1986ish. That fondness is rapidly going west along with VMware (consultant for 25 years).
I fucking hate being taken for a ride and basically being abused. Today, my company received an email from Broadcom telling us that we are no longer welcome as a reseller/unpaid support org. Luckily we started migrating our customers away from VMware some time ago and only the ones with the deepest pockets and greatest inertia remain. The rest are rocking Proxmox and I'm a much happier consultant too.
One day MS might tell my company that they have decided to dispense with our reseller/unpaid support services too, once they are sure that everyone is tucked up with a subscription.
Well, they can piss off too. I am capable of running email systems on prem (and do) even though I have migrated my firm from on prem Exchange to M365. I still point MX records to our place (Exim + rspamd) and run an imapd for some mailboxes. A calendar app is all that is missing.
What I hope I am getting across is that dumping Windows and co is quite a broad subject.
I think that your choice of Deborah and Ian's (bless!) distro is a really good solid starter for 10 but to be honest after a while you should be able to run any variety of Linux.
You should be able to install multiple Window Managers eg Gnome and KDE Plasma and all the rest at the same time and be able to select which session to use from your Display Manager (eg SDDM).
I have almost certainly overstayed my welcome in this tread but before I go, I will suggest that anyone who calls themself an IT (anything) should at least have a go at all available systems. Nowadays OS/2 Warp on something like 25 floppies is not a barrier to play (spin up a VM).
Kind of glad to read this, I went into it thinking it will be another person saying "I'll use Linux forever!" the day after installing it, similar to everyone who says their new years resolution is to work out more, then proceeds to go to the gym 2 times total :)
(oh, and then, I noticed this is Xe!)
The last Windows computer that I have is my work laptop, which is an acceptable compromise as far as I"m concerned.
I even tried vibecoding my own custom text editor to use for todo and notes management, but that didn't go quite well lmao. (if anyone curious about my journey: after that I vibe-coded a Sublime Text 4 plugin that kinda worked, then I discovered Dynalist and it's more structured experience was a big hit. When I found out with Dynalist I didn't own my data, I tried other outliners (liked none), then I spent a couple of days trying to sort out some sort of scheme to use Obsidian similarly to Dynalist, didn't look too promising and also Obsidian is not open source, so now I'm finally trying Emacs (spacemacs) for the first time in my life for org-mode. Wish me luck!)
I recently jumped to Debian/KDE as a daily driver, and it feels great. I am coming after many years of running Linux via cli on my home server. I am also unironically enjoying wobbly windows.
I don't think they much care, long gone are the days of consumer Windows being a cash-cow. And if you buy a machine with Windows on and put Linux over the top, they still have that little bit of money from you via the manufacturer. Adverts on the start menu and such, is not an action that would be taken by a company with any real pride in their OS.
Nadella is focused on AI and Azure. Bet he could hardly care less.
My main issue now was the 16GB of RAM using a VM and working on rust, which would kill the system, but now I have more, so all the issues are gone.
One of the machines has become a media-center, with a remote keyboard, anyone at home can operate now.
Multiple screens, bluetooth, drag and drop, night/light all seems to be working
After decades of macOS, and a bit of Windows, I tried Linux again recently and it was... good? For the first time in 20+ years, I ran into no big issues and no need to switch back.
The new UI stuff happening in Gnome-land, while controversial, has started to make the desktop feel modern and cohesive.
After years of Windows Explorer, clicking around in ~~Nautilus~~Files felt so snappy. The built-in Gnome document viewer is fantastic.
Gnome is starting to show glimmers of being the natural evolution of the Mac desktop, not a poor imitation -- which is very exciting.
Something has gone wrong in Microsoft in the product management organization where they are more concerned with chasing advertising dollars and upselling OneDruge than building a good product. It is depressing because all the Microsoft engineers I’ve interacted with in open source work have been excellent.
I worry that we are edging closer and closer to a similar phenomenon with macOS as well. Apple seems intent on squandering every bit of stability and sanity that macOS used to represent. Maybe now that Alan Dye is gone, we will at least see the abomination that is Liquid Glass fixed…somehow.
Try dual-booting, and see if your games work...
https://theandrewbailey.com/article/290/Mass-Effect-Legendar...
The things I personally had problems with is BTRFS and printers. BTRFS was completely irrecoverable after a system crash, full story see here [1]. Since I've read a lot of these horror stories while doing some research after the crash, I would encourage everyone using it to be careful and backup your system on a daily basis. I switched to ZFS with ZFSBootMenu[2] and never looked back.
Printer-wise, I have a Canon network printer / scanner which seems to use a strange proprietary protocol. On Fedora everything worked fine while on Arch I did not find a way to get this thing working (I tried hard with different options like driverless, gutenprint, cupsd etc.) - printing also seems to be a bit of a security nightmare when changing firewall settings is mandatory.
Everything else is working absolutely stunning.
1: https://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=13013
In short, I'm not sure there are any real issues with having it on disk but unreadable by anybody but root.
Since I reboot my notebook only about once in a month it is no real hassle to enter the key twice 12 times a year :-)
[1] Laugh all you want. There will be a year of the Linux desktop (2023):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33213663
[2] Why there should never be a "year of the Linux desktop" (2009):
[0]: https://iced.rs/
Thank god I've been using Linux long enough to not experience any of that.
At my job in a large non-tech company, almost everyone uses Windows (except for the dev team) purely because of Microsoft Office. As long as that thing exists, they can do all the dumb things they want and still dominate.
Web-based really ought to work. Maybe your admins are being weird, and checking the user agent? Try using a plug-in to change your user-agent to Windows
I would have switched by now but film and audio production software, including VSTs, don't seem to be greatly supported on Linux. I'd love to hear from someone if you are successfully doing this.
I play loads of games; its mainly AAA multiplayers that aren't able to run on linux due to kernel anti-cheat - nearly everything else runs well with minimal effort using proton via steam (either installed via steam or imported as a non-steam game).
Meanwhile, 84% is perfectly playable (some with minor tweaks).
Of course one point here is that MS owns some of the more problematic game studios. Anti cheat here might be less about users cheating and more about them using this as a control point to ensure gamers keep on preferring Windows. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I don't think MS has much of a moat left for gaming. And it will be tempting for them as well to tap into the few percent of Linux using Steam users for selling them games. They've long stopped insisting on windows for things like Office or SQL Server as well. The whole of Azure is pretty much Linux based at this point. So, they might dig in for a bit but they'll be under growing pressure to give in.
It is just a short post to note about how in 2025 some of my friends are finally migrating to Linux. And that was something awesome for me.
https://blog.juliardi.com/2025-is-the-year-of-linux-desktop-...
It would be great if all those "I switched to Linux" articles would mention a few ways to donate to some important projects, helping to make FOSS thrive.
Why not Bazzite on both? Bazzite is a fantastic desktop OS! Easier to use than naked Fedora and virtually unbreakable.
It is hilarious how accurate this is. When something crashes on Windows you better hope it has its own logs you can find because the OS itself will tell you nothing. Event Viewer can't hold a candle to journald!
The main reason was to protect my personal data from possible supply chain issues or LLM agent mishaps.
I’m 99% in VSCode, a browser, and a terminal. There’s hardly a difference day-to-day.
I find that W11 just works: the multitasking is awesome (especially window and monitor management, huge improvement over W10), everything is snappy, the ARM64 battery life (especially in standby) is Macbook-like, I never have issues with USB-C docks and monitors (unlike Fedora where I always have to tinker with the terminal at some point), and the Windows version of Microsoft Excel is still unmatched.
Also, the UI is very pretty, but that's obviously subjective! And you get way more customization options on Linux.
I am not encountering most issues listed here, which I why I was confused, although I agree that Microsoft AI-bullshit-driven "vision" for Windows is a bit worrying.
(We use Windows 11 on plastic Thinkpads (L15s, intel) at the centre I work in, an educational organisation. They have ads, insist on switching to edge even though we need Chrome for single sign on and do seem a tad sluggish).
An open, modular, diverse UX is like having a stocked kitchen of staples, pans, tools, fresh produce, and a stove. You add a toaster oven, smoker, water bath, grow a kitchen garden of your own, find local butchers and fishmongers. Over time you build up a small collection of both your own and others’ recipes and books and articles on food theory and trends. You can also have a microwave of course, but you’ll use it in many different ways than before.
It’s harder work but so is walking instead of driving or reading instead of watching TV. It can seem irritatingly virtuous to some that you put this extra effort into your daily life but they’ll be swayed when they see you serve up a ZFS snapshot to temporarily test an edit over 20GB of data, or pop up a new niri workspace to track and purchase concert tickets, or dive into editing your journal in a custom distraction free mode you put together showing only your editor and this week’s GPS logs.
You aren’t making everything from scratch, but you do make a few ingredients yourself — pickles and bread in the kitchen and scripts and local web hacks on your computer — and you certainly have complete control over the finished product in a way that simply isn’t possible with a microwave and a boxed lasagna, or a copy of Windows 11.
You don’t even have to cook! You can have pre-made microwave meals with a Linux desktop. They still taste better because they were made with love by a global network of friends and family instead of by Nestlé, Kraft, and Heinz.
As a side note - if you're in that venn diagram overlap group of linux and gaming...check out "beyond all reason" RTS if you haven't. High chance it'll tickle you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wxwIxz4PaY
edit: not affiliate to linked yt - organic enthusiastism
Similarly I haven't booted up Windows in months now. Debian is super stable as a desktop OS and does everything I want at it now.
I am in this weird position where I am keeping a Windows installation around just in case I need it for something. I had a one job interview where they wanted me to use Visual Studio (C#) and it turned out they were fine with me using Rider anyway.
Yeah, right, these types of shallow pieces about Linux "for the masses" have the same structure without addressing the obvious issues:
- Windows has the following 3 components that became worse.
Well, they were bad 10 years ago (the ones that existed), so you could've spent a few hours per component to replace it (Start menu), disable it (Copilot), or find a workaround (invoke process manager with a shortcut without going through the webview in ctrl-alt-del or maybe there is some non-web app the presents the same menu of a few items) or even just ingore it (what are the serious practical issues with using dumb webviews for a tiny menu?)
But the alternative would require you spending many days learning the whole new OS where many things you're used to would simply not exist.
Want to find any file anywhere instantly (including newly created)? No, impossible, there is only NTFS Everything app that does it.
Got tired of the File Explorer garbage and got used to the greatness of Opus? Well, good luck, there is not a single great file manager over there
Want to relax and play X, Y, Z games? Oops, only A, B, C have good support, will take another decade to fix that (but at least someone is working on that)
Want to use your favorite Productivity/VideoShop app? No one is even working on that, so another decade would not fix that.
So how is it reasonable (for the masses, not you!) to replace a few fixable annoyances with a bigger list of the same and an even bigger list of unfixable stuff?
File manager is one those reason. Damn, there is no alternatives to DOPUS.
Don't get me started with AutoHotkey. There is nothing compared to that.
Indeed, I've purposefully avoided mentioning that because thought it's less "mass-relevant", but yeah, that's a huge blocker for any "advanced" customization OS workflow.
> Want to find any file anywhere instantly (including newly created)? No, impossible, there is only NTFS Everything app that does it.
Fsearch exists and is pretty much exactly that afaict. https://cboxdoerfer.github.io/fsearch/
No it's not, it's worse, and Fsearch dev said that it's not possible to implement it as well due to OS deficiencies. So nothing is getting better here.
e.g. it took until 2025 for this RFC to be opened on moving PowerShell profiles and modules out of Onedrive: https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell-RFC/pull/388. It should not be taking seconds for my powershell profile to load just because i have onedrive enabled by default.
I also had a non-technical friend recently get burned by a default MS Office setting where edited documents located in the OneDrive folder save directly to onedrive, and it only gets saved on disk when onedrive gets the new copy and uploads it back it to the user's disk. So if the MS office to onedrive integration fails your changes won't save. Apparently users have to enable a setting to first save to a folder on disk? That folder can even be the onedrive folder so onedrive will eventually sync it back up.
https://www.retorch.com/blog/linux-mint.htm
If I remember, Linux Mint was on kernel 5.15 at the time.
The TL;DR is that fractional scaling was broken under Cinnamon, and Brightness controls were broken under KDE.
Most gaming was good, but a brand new game (Hogwart's Legacy) had major issues, including crashing and vastly worse performance compared to Windows. Another game wouldn't work with multiplayer (Anno 1800) which meant I couldn't play it with my spouse.
So I'm tempted to go back, give Linux 6.8 or 6.11 a try, and see if those issues are fixed. (I sold that laptop to a family member, so I'd probably try it on a newer Legion 5 Pro, but still with Nvidia graphics.)
For my primary machine though... what I would miss most is DxO PhotoLab. I love my Fujifilm XT-5 and mirrorless photography, and I love editing with DxO. I tried Lightroom, darktable, and a few other pieces of software, but I kept going back to PhotoLab. It's not objective - it's very subjective but I get the most joy out of using PhotoLab for editing.
I really hope (like throw a wish in a bottle) that companies like DxO consider supporting Linux[0] but I doubt it's even on their radar. Software like this uses hardware in demanding ways, and it isn't trivial to support it.
Now, this is one person's anecdote, but I do think it's a factor in overall mainstream acceptance. For Linux users, after years or decades of use, they've embraced the software available to them, but for Windows / macOS users, they will often have to consider what compromises they'll have to make. (I know Adobe is thrown around a lot, and it's a fine example, but I don't like Adobe's subscription model... I still gave it a fair shake but enjoyed PhotoLab much more!) But I think my point will still be that there's a chicken-and-egg scenario, and it's taking a very long time to get Linux to the kind of market share it needs to start forcing the hands of the thousands of companies that don't currently support Linux.
[0] https://support.dxo.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406558299537-Syst...
Linux has got better but not yet there.
And it's not just techies. My non-technical brother-in-law asked me to install Linux for him last fall. I installed Xubuntu, showed him how everything worked, and haven't had a single "support call" since.
Overall though, solid choice. Hope 2026 really is your year of the Linux desktop.
Corey (a character of mine) says stick with ext4.
Steam has worked perfectly, clicking install and then hitting play, no futzing with drivers or weird updates. The only games I haven't been able to play are League of Legends and some of the new AAA shooters. I'm okay with that because I don't particularly care at this point, and it's not worth maintaining a Windows install to periodically play for an hour or so.
Linux has been unbelievably stable. This year, I fully upgraded the system and planned on reinstalling but I didn't even need to. On first boot, my old install was picked up and mostly just worked. On Windows I've tried that before, and it was an unrelenting shit show (that resulted in having to nuke the old windows install).
The only hitch I've had was installing conflicting NVidia drivers (open source vs proprietary); which, I was able to fix by booting into the command line then nuking both sets of drivers via apt remove and installing the one I wanted. Took me less than five minutes and my system was working. It also wouldn't have happened if I hadn't tried being too clever (and Pop_OS! having some quirks).
I recently setup a MiniPC to use while traveling to game on and this time I tried Arch. To my surprise the install was ridiculously easy. The most recent installer makes it a breeze. My only mistake was not noticing I'd installed a few desktop environments and the default wasn't what I wanted so things seemed broken. After selecting KDE from the login menu et volia! It worked perfectly. I'm considering switching my primary rig to Arch, but I'll give the most recent Pop_OS! release a try to see if the newer LTS version gets me access to some new packages first.
Linux is great folks. If you stick with a major distro you're likely going to love it. It's really low maintenance and just works. 11/10 would recommend to anyone.
Even the smaller ones are unironically pretty fun to work with now-a-days. I'm currently rocking Gentoo on my stuff. After the painful setup, it's actually quiet easy to maintain.
Flatseal[4] is a GUI that allows you to mange the sandboxes/permissions. You can also manage them via cli if you prefer.
For CLI apps, you can use distrobox[5] or toolbx[6].
[2] https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/basic-concepts.html#sandb...
Those permission categories are so coarse grained as to be useless. In order to pause a media player when a call comes in I have to give the media player access to the phone app. Pure madness.
I started using Linux almost a decade ago; starting with Ubuntu, then I moved to Kubuntu and now I'm on Omarchy which is even more optimized for developers.
I feel very comfortable recommending Linux to people now though I would recommend a different distro depending on who is asking.
IMO Ubuntu is the simplest general-purpose one. Kubuntu is the same but more customizable slightly more developer-focused. Omarchy (which is a fork of Arch Linux) is very developer-focused.
- I managed to make a process crash just clicking around the Settings app
- Sleep doesn't work (spins up the fans, then turns them down, then turns off off displays etc but I then the fan are spinning, so something is running). Looking at the menu, supposedly Firefox is 'blocking' sleep, but I blocked it, and that just meant the fans stayed spun up during sleep. Wtf?
- Monitor connected via dock via USB-C only worked after I plugged it directly into the laptop then back into the dock
- WiFi is preferenced over Ethernet (?!)
- KDE default panel is 'floating' which means wasted pixels below it. Looks ugly and wastes precious vertical space. And the blue highglight of the active window is over the top. And the default panel height is 44 pixels!
- Default fonts especially in Konsole look ugly on a 1920x1080 laptop LCD.
- Booting takes forever
- Impressive it can stream to Homepods out the box...but it cuts out when you open the sound widget in the taskbar. And also at random points
- The default pop-up notifications are too numerous
- The Night Light quick option is to suspend it, not to enable it. Which is interesting, as it's not enabled currently. I want to enable it! There is no option to once-off enable.
EDIT:
- And during boot, the LVM2 unlock is only shown on the built-in display. Then the Login Screen is kind of mirrored, but updates are only shown on the external display ?! (ie password characters not filled in on the built-in display). Very odd
I love Linux, and MacOS might be turning into iOS and becoming buggier, but MacOS has none of those issues.
Wider man on street, less sure
As for me - having a good time on linux
> The AI Agent that gets your codebase Copilot & Cursor letting you down? Try Augment. Install Now
I think I finally gave it up in anger, when it was on a laptop I was using for a few important projects and it cost me days of work.
I now use Windows+WSL and it has the best of both worlds: A fully functional GUI with everything I would ever need with Linux.
MacOS is really the best Nix Desktop OS out there. I would use this instead, but I still require some windows apps.
But more seriously, it's pretty ironic to see all of these posts on HN, a supposed "tech" community, about switching to Linux, especially the comments describing how it defied their low expectations (tacitly revealing their own lack of prior first-hand experience). You never would have seen this on Slashdot 20 years ago, where dual booting Linux (or some BSD, despite it dying) was the minimum "geek cred" to not be seen as a poser.
And this was at a time when distros were far less user-friendly and had far more hardware compatibility issues and far less support for running Windows software.
I don't really disagree with you. More and more I see people living with just their phones. Personally it's not for me, but it's getting more and more prevalent. Even some business just have people using iPads/tables in the field, no point in lugging a laptop around when you're only using one or two apps and email.
For developers and systems administrators though, we're going to need the desktop for decades to come. Nothing else comes close in terms of flexibility. Just think how many SREs live in the terminal still. Not because there aren't UIs and applications, but because those applications can only be installed and configured from the command line.
Accounting is also a long way away from dropping the desktop, again, they need a ton of flexibility.
Microsoft is probably "correct" in that it's not really worth spending to much time on the desktop, because the average user launched a browser, Steam or some custom piece of software and just stays there all day. It's not really financially viable to make something good for the last 10%, on the other hand, those people would probably be fine with being stuck on the Windows 2000 or XP UI.
To me, Windows has been the best experience with gaming (yes, including the stupid bullshit anti-cheat software that shouldn’t exist in the way it does, the devs making it truly only support Windows), the desktop experience has been tolerable, especially with PowerToys and FancyZones in particular and that one registry change to restore classic context menu. Still feels like fighting against the OS but passable.
Linux has been the best experience for regular computing and software development, especially since a lot of the software I deploy runs in Docker containers, so getting more or less the same user land is nicer than subtle Windows incompatibilities (e.g. bind mount permissions, line endings, crap like that). Also package managers are just nice and some desktops out there are really good for daily driving (personally I like Cinnamon, but KDE and XFCE and others all have their place).
Apple stuff has been the best in regards to the hardware integration and coherence (e.g. the experience of using a MacBook or iPhone and everything working without any driver issues on other OSes), having a pretty polished desktop experience, but also super weird things such as no proper AA on generic external monitors (e.g. 1080p), limited hardware ports, oddly locked down ecosystem and odd support choices (e.g. the dance you gotta do to install development apps, the PWA situation) and just weird choices in regards to keyboard layout and how the mouse feels compared to both of the other OSes. Okay development, not great gaming situation, worse than Linux at this point.
I like my iPhone (reduced Liquid Glass transparency) and MacBook Air (great for notes or travel), but daily drive either Windows or Linux. Tried FreeBSD for one of my servers too but hardware support wasn’t wide enough, not sure what the desktop situation there is like.
Hardware support is plenty wide enough. Just buy the hardware that supports FreeBSD and that's most of it. Same with the desktop and I've run servers and desktops for 25 years using easily found, common, name brand hardware that runs FreeBSD.
It’s like when you want Docker on MacOS. Helpful people will say that you should just use colima. Yeah it works perfectly well… until you want to open udp ports (this was the case half a year ago). All 3 OSes are like that, just the flavor is different.
If you know how to find “reject all” on all cookie banners, Windows will be easier for you.
If you know networking and pf, then MacOS will be easier for you.
If you know how to debug driver bugs, Linux will be easier for you (and fun as hell imho)
Anyway, if you don’t want to do much more than internet browsing/video playing/basic gaming/basic coding, it simply doesn’t matter. // I would still say that the default network/firewall settings for MacOS is sketchy as hell however
I've been unable to login after filling my disk before, I wouldn't call the system bricked because I was able to fix it by mounting the disk on another computer and freeing up space, but I wouldn't quibble over the term either.
I remember it had a particular fondness for deleting old kernel versions, failing to install the new kernel, and thus bricking the system on boot. Alternatively, uninstalling the entire WM because one package had a conflict.
At any rate, sorry you had such a frustrating experience.