But if I just judge windows vs linux, on even ground, W11 is painful. I've main'd linux on my laptop for ~ 25 years. There was a time when it was a jank experience that I put up with for better devex, but that ended in the late 00's. From that point forward, unless you were trying to get bleeding edge hardware to work, linux has been hands down better.
It's enough that I've considered giving up online play all together just to have a nicer computing experience.
I treat the windows one as a console essentially, not even logged into my password manager or email or anything. It is only for games. Basically an Xbox, with all sorts of normal annoying UX, but it doesn’t matter for all of the ~2 minutes until I can launch a game
Separate linux drive for everything else.
It's not perfect, but I anyway had the computer for other reasons and may need it for the other reasons again after which I would need to re-setup anything. Bazite default/w. SteamOS UI install + a minor number of setting changes (1) and a login to steam and it's ready to go again. Can't complain. Just which the SteamOS UI version would also do the same background download+apply of updates the main versions or distros like Fedora Silverblue do.
While not quite yet console experience, for many games it really is not "that" far away. (For some other games very much very far away, don't expect any competitive PvP games or games with real world money related online economy working. To some degree it's not even about anti-cheat not working on Linux. It's about many such games struggling making it work on Windows and having no room to bother with another platform, and dishonest managers potentially using "all Linux fault" as an excuse when the anti-cheating strategy failed on Windows where most of their players where... (happened before))
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(1): Mainly SteamOS UI is made for Handhelds and as such has some bad defaults for more powerful desktops (which likely will change soon). I'm only couch gaming on it, hence close to everything else just stays with default settings. Sure it's not fancy customized Linux or most maximal privacy preserving Linux. But it's in the "good enough" area of settings, privacy and similar, which Windows in many aspects isn't anymore. No fighting windows forcing things down your throat, weather it's Copilot, the nasty way it tries to deceive you into using it's online drive, etc.
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Oh and as minor tip: You can majorly micro optimize kernels, schedulers, drivers etc. If you don't need to, then don't bother. That is where unexpected perf. regressions, issues after updates etc. come in. Like you still find reports about Bazzite being slower then windows due to them having don that in the past and having run into an unexpected perf. regression on some hardware without realizing. I mean it is fun to tinker. But I'm in the "please mostly just work" age by now.
oh man, do I have some really bad news for you:
Been dual booting for >20 years now. It's nice that some games work on Linux pretty well these days, and of course I had fun messing with Wine manually to get some stuff to work decades ago. But it really doesn't bother me too much to reboot when switching between gaming and literally anything else.
The functionality is present on my new Lenovo laptop, various generations of HP elite/pro books/desks, old asus mobo and newer cheap gigabyte mobo, 7th gen intel nuc.
To say nothing of the truly excellent battery life Macs these days get.
That's the only reason to avoid Linux on a laptop these days, IMO.
I do have a Windows Server 2025 and Win11 VM running for a couple testing issues, but that's about it. That said, there seems to be a few integration issues on Wayland where the RDP client or the VM UI both will not intercept hotkeys like alt-tab, which makes it kind of painful to use the VM effectively.
Even with the rough edges in Cosmic, I'll still take it over the jank they keep addding to Windows.
I have a spare laptop with Pop OS on it now and I'm really enjoying it. Kind of forget I'm on it sometimes. I'm considering putting it as my OS for my main powerful laptop that I play most of my games on.
Other than that, yeah, it's a royal pain in the ass. It's treating the user primarily as an upsell funnel.
But we don't play any online multiplayer games, so YMMV on that one.
If people had set their family members up with Firefox and Ublock Origin, then the Manifest v2 deprecation wouldn’t have resulted in seniors getting hit with certain scams. Specifically over the period between deprecation and the next visit from tech savvy family members.
Unforgivable btw
Edit - Linux bit’s important too b/c of MS nagscreens that could try to upsell
most times it this tooling which causes issues not the mod itself
For very popular games it's not rare if moddingkit/tooling producer (or contributes) made the tooling work on Linux, but it can be very hit or miss.
but it increasingly more "just works", kinda, somewhat
I installed the Professional edition, disabled a few settings that I don't like the first time I installed it, and haven't had any issue or friction since then.
Meanwhile I'm constantly frustrated at MacOS and obviously you can't do anything on Linux without running into some sort of trouble.
Rasism was fixed by not using black- and whitelists on firewalls. Separate endeavour.
I honestly don't mind this, as long as it's not being forced. And I believe this feature exists only within their npu PCs.
I could be wrong, but as far as I know there's not one "Fix Windows 11" tool maintained to do all this for you.
"You have to toggle AI features off in Notepad, and they changed the name to Advanced Features now," is just another heaving brick on the pile.
What percent of users ever found that useful? I think I’m being generous to guess one in ten thousand.
Absolutely braindead management running Windows development.
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/remove-3d-objects-folder-wino...
For their default file explorer experience, the prominent fourth option right in the sidebar. Oh my gosh, that is hilarious. Did someone think it made the computer look advanced (or did they want you to buy apps to uh make 3D stuff from them)?
Or, you can install and reinstall linux distros and learn the ropes.
You should be fine as long as you use a proper firewall device and access only manually withelisted websites, but it is always better to keep it offline. That said, it can become your next firewall device.
Some of us (including very much me) simply do not want Copilot/AI anything and playing whackamole with settings is annoying but we'll do it anyway and it leaves a bad taste.
Since it's the software equivalent of been in a filing cabinet in the basement behind a door that has a sign saying "Beware the Leopard".
In reality it's a moot point, I disable AI features and Windows is a gloried steamos box for me at this point, I do my actual computing booted into Linux and have for decades.
These sudden additions also correlated with the first CVE [1] in Notepad since its inception, so maybe their attention isn't where it should be.
I for one very much mind this and many other inclusions including the metastatic takeover off Office. OneDrive also was forced upon and severely worsened functioning software, despite not being "AI", so there is precedent at least.
[0] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enhance-your-wri...
[1] https://infosecwriteups.com/the-dumb-editor-that-got-too-sma...
This is indeed a step forward. With QuickBooks, there is currently no way to disable their extremely intrusive AI. I may just vibe-code a browser extension to block it. Fight fire with fire.
The real question is this: While the floppy disk became the standard "Save" icon, what will eventually become the standard "AI functionality" icon?
"Can you edit the Word document so the format is in line with these requirements?"
"No, but I can help you draft an implementation consistent with the requirements."
"Can you add this section to the 35 individual copies of this document in this OneDrive folder?"
"No, but I can help you draft [something]."
This is NOT the AI revolution anyone was waiting for.
Interesting, I can't recall a single voice "Oh I'm so happy they changed their corporate strategy" but many of "I'll believe it when I see it".
So those who were skeptic were right - one can not trust Microslop. Its AI addiction is too strong already. It sold its soul to AI. There is no way back for Microslop anymore. All Win11 users will have to support AI. AI up all the things! \o/
The only thing generated was boatloads of incredulity and some laughs.
A fortune 500 company I worked for renamed internal projects many times when the original failed. But they continued dumping money into those black holes. One dollar eating project was renamed 3 times and was on its way for a 4th rename when I left. That project was started between 2005 and 2010. I was not involved with it, but everyone knew it would fail.
So M/S renaming copilot ? I expect a few more renames as time goes on :)
I'm tired of being a victim.
For me there's nothing MS could do at this point that would bring me back. And as I said in that thread, it's too late for them - people are moving elsewhere, maybe not in big numbers but exodus is in progress. MS harassed their users/clients too hard and for too long; now it's time to "enjoy" fruits of their deranged actions and decisions.
And right after that they added a brand new feature called tolipoc that will revolutionize the way you analyze your logs or modify your 17 year old cmd file!
Want to create a file with the current date and time? No need to google for it, tolipoc will do it for you!