Using Windows 11 is, for me personally, absolutely brutal. The defaults feel anti user. An example in the form of an issue I encountered recently: if you have an OS that fails to boot, and you had files on demand enabled in directories backed up with one drive, the files are totally inaccessible on the local disk, even if you had them "synced".
It seems like retrieving files from my SSD should be a basic function of a general purpose OS, but they've gone and bungled it in order to push dependence on their cloud services.
General answer: Because it's needless complexity (relying on a company's service rather than... reading from a local disk) that masks what is actually happening behind the scenes. It will always be less reliable.
Answer in that specific situation: They were files in a OneDrive that no longer existed after a tenant migration (they hired a consulting company that seemed to bungle things).
If software prevents me from performing a simple action on my files on my machine (unless this is the specific intended function I had for the program) it is, in the simplest sense of the term, malware. It has done me malice. People pay to be harmed, go figure.
Absolutely as a work tool it is perfect. No chance I'd be as productive if I was to be forced to use Windows in a software development professional environment.
I find it really surprising on the rare occasion these days that somebody shares the screen and suddenly Windows is there.
Windows constantly nags me to "back up my files to OneDrive". There does not appear to be a way to turn off this nag, just silence it for 30 days at a time. This is just one of the many annoyances that mean I rarely boot windows anymore.
Trying to use the file browser (Explorer) on Windows 11 is enough to make me want to gouge my eyes out. I only use Windows for launching Call of Duty. As soon as the game is off, the PC gets turned off.
Linux gets a lot of flack for having UI issues - but truth be told modern Windows is a case study in lava driven development where some apps look like they were made in 1998 and others look like they were made by the IKEA childrens department. Heck even the OS installer has not been touched since Windows 7 and is pretty terrible.
Modern KDE is really worth taking for a spin. I find it to be far more visually consistent than Windows 11. The customization can be all the rope to hang yourself with but if you don't go hogwild with that I find it is a very clean, modern and consistent desktop experience.
You aren't really suffering because the group policy manager or whatever isn't written in the latest winui framework. I'd rather continuity than apple style shenanigans in the name of an annual rebrand and spitshine.
Apple is literally the definition of continuity. All of their apps have looked great and have remained consistent since OS X was initially released. Recent exception is the changes to the system settings panel, but the old design was the same for like 15 years.
Just going through the "Let's finish setting up your PC!" that pops up after certain Windows updates (which is a problem in and of itself) illustrates the design inconsistency. Each stage of the wizard is a distinct web view rendering a completely different UI that has different fonts and buttons. You can get them to glitch and scroll a-la old school iframes, too.
The context menus in Win11? They are fancy and new but 90% of the functions you want and need are hidden behind a disclosure menu that - you guessed it - pops out an ancient looking Windows 10 menu. Why even add the facade with limited functions? Just keep the old menu.
I could probably write a 20 page blog post on all the UI fuckery in Windows 11.
There is something to be said for the MSC stuff / management console remaining the same all these years ... but at that point we could all just be happy on Windows 2K shell with modern kernel and security enhancements.
That's hardly true for many of the Apple apps (go look at the iTunes UI archive) and many of the changes are of questionnable usefulness/coherence/consistency.
You are just more used to it and prefer the "airy" look. As far as I'm concerned, macOS has severely regressed and that's before considering 3rd party apps.
Many of them do not macOS UI convention anymore (they became shitty anyway) and many others just use completely custom UI (both technical and look); to finish you have windows/linux ports that just have the chrome of a macOS apps but the whole UI is completely foreign and doesn't even try to fit in.
If your use case fits narrowly into the confine of what software Apple produces, I guess you could loosely say that. But their continuity is only about a general look, sadly not how things work (or should work), not really that important in the end.
The System Preferences re-design is precisely a case of looks over everything else (and previously it already had been downgraded, with sections/labels removed to make it look more minimalist). Apple makes fashion and like a shirt it will follow a basic pattern, but a lot of details change, and it matters...
KDE is the pretty terrible in terms of consistency. Because it tries to support every variation of workflow it always felt like it was really lacking in UX. Ive tried several times to get it but I usually fall back to Gnome. Even if I don't agree with every decision and lack of customization at least it feels like there's some vision in how it should be used.
Amazing is the new Outlook app for Windows, which inserts adverts inline into your inbox and disguises them to look like emails so that you'll click on them. Better yet, the new Outlook will forcefully replace the existing built-in Mail app in 2024.
Amazing is the new Edge browser, which syndicates clickbait articles and adverts from some of the worst and most divisive publishers right onto the opening screen. Attempts to download other browsers are met with nagware popups pleading with you to use Edge.
I thought the same, until I noticed a really annoying WSL2 bug: On two machines I own, waking up from hibernate or standby causes a wsl related process (vmmem) to consume 100% CPU, with wsl becoming completely unresponsive (including wsl terminate etc).
You have to kill all wsl processes, which requires admin rights. So without elevated rights, Ubuntu on windows is not usable on these laptops.
I ran into this issue as well. I also spent a few hours debugging problems with a database just to discover that I could not reach a server because WSL2 does not support IPV6 (https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4518)
I'm very much a Linux person, having used it for decades, but I still find whenever I need to do something in Windows, that it's a total mess with regards to the different GUI paradigms in use in different tools. For instance, setting up an iSCSI volume drops you into some archaic window that isn't resizable despite having lengthy WWIDs that need to have their column size increased so that you can then scroll and actually see the relevant bit at the end. And that's just one example from the top of my head. Maybe I just notice the glaring inconsistencies and user-unfriendliness of it because I'm much more at home using a CLI which is typically very flexible and doesn't force you to interact with poorly designed GUIs.
I will say, with a touch of humor (but also some genuine sharpness), it's been somewhat entertaining to watch things go from "Linux sucks because it's so inconsistent because it's built by a bunch of people with different ideas" to watching Windows, a single OS by exactly one company, devolve into the same hodgepodge. Like, sure, making GTK and QT apps look similar is a pain (if you even bother), but what's your excuse when they're all under one roof?
If you need to connect iSCSI I'd say you're definitely not the target user base for Windows 11. I use W11 at home (streaming, browsing, emails, word) completely happy, it's a no-brain-required environment and W11 is perfect for that. At work I happily use Linux for all the tricks and updates and whatnot I actually need to do to win my bread. And someone else will happily use MacOS for artistry... so? Does that deny the use case of any others? No it doesn't.
I have no issue with people using whatever OS they want to - that's part of why I had a big grudge against Microsoft over the years with their anti-competitive strategies. It just amazes me that other people don't pick up on the obvious issues that come with competing teams producing different parts of the OS. There's still a bunch of old style control panel tools in use in Win11 and they've been there since Vista at least.
My kids windows computers suddenly activated Family mode so I need to log onto my MS account to authorize absolutely everything; but only in Edge, not Chrome. What's the point. It's very frustrating. I'll probably switch it to Linux for the one that uses Google classroom at school.
Pretty sure it's inheriting it from the xbox since I use a family domain and even though I created a local Windows account it wants to link the MS account.
That's more to do with the flexibility of choice and that there isn't one controlling organisation. However, the use of a CLI is pretty much ubiquitous with Linux and it's usually trivial to get text output into whatever form that you desire.
I suppose my biggest gripe with Windows is non-resizable windows still in use in it - just why?
I feel like Windows is the bud light of operating systems. It's corporate, a worse experience than alternatives, increasingly focused on advertising and is only popular because it's the only beer on tap at your favorite bar (video games).
These comparisons tend to be very tedious. I use Windows 11, MacOS and Linux in different scenarios. They have advantages and disadvantages for different applications. My main computer is Windows because it works better for my needs, but Linux is great too. I like MacOS the least, but it does really well in battery life with the M2 processor.
> They have advantages and disadvantages for different applications.
The issue with Windows is that everything is painful, clunky and not well thought. It's death by a thousand cuts.
At least with Linux you know you need some knowledge to be proficient at it. Windows tries to be simple to use but it's not, it's a hodge podge of different UI/UX patterns and philosophies, there's no way to create a mental model that you can apply consistently and effectively, you need to learn what each task requires to be able to complete it.
Windows is fine despite the occasional annoyances. I have my core workflows streamlined/memorized and I feel very little pain. I can see this being a problem to a brand new user, but that's not my case so I don't feel this clunkiness.
My mom is on arch, and she is as happy as if it was windows but with faster boot and faster response time. She could not tell the difference since all she needs is browser.
She knows it's some flavour of linux and she knows it's way faster than windows she had before. These are simple facts improving her day-to-day experience, no need to be negative about that.
Sorry - I wasn't intending to be negative, but making a quip about how arch users love to tell everyone about it. I've got Arch in use on a couple of machines (Steam Deck being my favourite, though I strictly use that just for games) and it's one of my favourite flavours of Linux. The best part of Arch is the wiki which has quality information on a lot of Linux tools - it's useful for all Linux wranglers (maybe not your mum unless she likes reading documentation).
I see, I agree me mentioning Arch is coming from my personal preference, I can't help it- I think Arch is the best :) But my mom could not care less, all she wants is fast boot and responsive browser without having to upgrade on RAM or buying entirely new hardware- this is what she used to do during her Windows time
I really like Arch, but my main issue is the problem with performing updates. I've been caught out a couple of times by updates where the issues were documented, but I hadn't bothered to read it. I've also managed to mangle a PinePhone installation where it couldn't update the pacman sources. I don't think it's very suitable for business servers though, due to the hands-on nature of it and the occasional surprise.
Oh you have Arch on PinePhone, can you share if this worked for you? Are you using that phone as your primary device? I bought PinePhone around 1.5y ago but did not have time to set it up
Yeah, I've got the Danctnix version of Arch running on a PinePhone original with the keyboard case. I've found the original PP is too slow for any serious use and haven't even attempted to use it as a phone. I got it with the idea of it being like some kind of cyberdeck when used with the keyboard, but the screen is too small for it to be of much use like that and it's also quite chunky with the keyboard case fitted. The keyboard also isn't very good, even after I took a dremel tool to the top line of keycaps to make them work properly.
I might well try the new UBPorts version on it as I've got an older UBPorts running on a JingPad. Basically, the original PP is very much a toy device unless you've got some very specific need for one.
Not really, because to actually be online the Wi-Fi driver should be compiled with a Kernel newer than 4.19 - so they can't really reach me to ask questions. /s
The discussion around operating systems really is tiring.
A lot of the comments here are no better than what we are seeing on that reddit post, which is sad.
Like you I use all 3 operating systems for different things. However Mac is my preferred OS for just general computing.
Linux I have installed on quite a few VM's and Raspberry PI's.
Windows I use for gaming, pretty much just gaming.
If we leave our tech bubble there is something to be said for the average user to use an operating system that the vast majority of software just works with. Yes Windows has its problems, but for the most part if you have an issue you can get support instead of needing to post to reddit (like this person with linux did if you check their post history).
I just did my first install of Windows 11. Based on what I had read before (which wasn't much), I expected Windows 10 + a new UI. Maybe it was my low expectations, but I was seriously impressed. It feels like MS really put a lot of work into polishing things. First, the biggest change does seem to be the new UI, but it is a HUGE improvement. Not only does it look nice and have more of a dock focus, but I also noticed everything is very smooth, even on the same hardware previously running Windows 10. With WSL2, it would be pretty easy to use Win11 UI for graphical apps, but use WSL2 for all my dev stuff. I am not sure if I will "switch" my home system at some point from PopOS Linux, but this is the first time I have ever even contemplated such in a very long time.
I wanted this to be true, and I really gave Windows 11 a fair trial for a while, but I hated it. Windows feels like a cobbled-together mess compared to nearly any flavor of Linux. Take for example the process of installing software. On Linux, type `sudo apt install the-program` and it's installed. What's that like on Windows? Open a web browser and search for the software publisher's website. Click around until you can find a package download. Download the installer. Double click the installer. Click "yes, I understand that I'm installing software downloaded from the Internet, and that's dangerous." Start the installation "wizard." Click "full install." Select the location you want to install the software. Click that you agree to like a hundred pages of the license terms and legal stuff. Delete the installer. After doing that a few times, I really started to miss Linux.
Updating software is also crazy on Windows. Every single program bugs you individually that it needs to be updated. In some cases you then have to download a whole new version of the software package and go through all the above steps. On Linux you can just type `sudo apt upgrade` or equivalent and all your software is updated.
I'm using Windows 10 right now as my main machine. I never experienced any crashes/blue screens except when my GPU started failing, but I can't count that against the OS. It is the most stable system I have ever used. Windows 11 on the other hand seems absolutely horrible to me. The privacy issues and anti user patterns keep piling on.
I'm open to switch to a Linux distro (and use it on all my servers anyway), but they all seem horrible on desktop. A few weeks ago I installed Ubuntu for testing, set a light background and wanted to change the text colors of the desktop. Not possible, except if you want to start messing with some CSS files. I also wanted to add an app shortcut to the desktop, also not possible without some extension and then the icons sometimes don't match and not all apps were supported.
If they would just create feature parity with the Windows Explorer, Windows might be toast in a few years, but it seems there is just no interest in that.
Ubuntu stopped being a good desktop when Canonical gave up on Unity quite a few years ago. I would recommend trying Linux Mint for a better desktop experience on Linux.
It's a troll post. The best giveaway is use of the term "distro-hopping" which, while a legitimate term, is probably more common in flamebait than actual usage. Then it brings up Android vs iOS for basically absolutely no reason.
Could be legitimate. It's not, but it totally could be if you believe hard enough.
I have switched to Windows for development on a laptop as well.
Linux still feels very "raw" to me on laptops outside of laptops designed to run Linux, and those are very few, hard to buy, not enough options.
MacOS laptops are great... unless you need to work with Docker, then it's still a nightmare. And these days most devs who work with backend need Docker.
Personally, I have used it on Intel macs and on my wife's M1 Pro about a year ago.
But we recently had a couple of new folks join our team who opted for M2 laptops and they've been having more or less the same pains I had a year ago, so have to run images with emulation (and those sometimes have nasty segfaults).
It's the opposite in my situation. After using Windows 11 for a few months, I considered moving to EndeavourOS. After two years, not much seemed to improve... In fact, it seemed to get worse. The company's decisions about user interface, web-based bloat, and regressions ultimately led me to decide to quit using any Microsoft products.
The key thing is WSL is very good. A real Linux environment with the distro of your choice running unmodified Linux binaries. It integrates well with Windows. Some things are a bit funky, like the networking, under the covers it's just a VM with all the usual issues that entails. But it mostly works great.
Combined with Windows Terminal and VS.Code and Microsoft has a very nice UI for developing on Linux machines.
Are people not allowed to have a positive opinion about an OS you dislike?
The OS is like a tool, not a religion. If it works for you great, if not then pick another tool, no need to go into a heated holy-war debate about how your tool is the beast and other people are using the wrong tool.
>The original post has no details whatsoever, it's just praising Windows for no reason. To me it does look like trolling.
The details are in his post:
"this is the most beautiful OS UI ever, more than GNOME and MacOS in my opinion"
The author lets us know he likes the interface of W11 more. Very important aspect for a OS you'll have to use regularly.
"After years of distro hopping and constant problems [...] not have to worry about Wayland, Nvidia"
The author lets un know he distro hopped but had issues with Wayland and Nvidia. Again an important point, what use is a OS that has issues with your HW/setup? Better stick to what already works for you. Most people don't have time to go into wikis, forums and tutorial rabbit holes to get $DISTRO working on their HW if Windows already works out of the box.
To me at least, the author has made it clear why W11 is better than Linux -FOR HIM-. So either you didn't read his post or you're the one who's trolling.
> The author lets un know he distro hopped but had issues with Wayland and Nvidia.
Which issues? On which hardware? If you install Linux on a random Windows-certified laptop, you should expect troubles and don't blame others for them. Would you blame Windows when it doesn't work on a MacBook? You should buy Linux preinstalled, just like you do with other OSes. I'm a happy Linux user for many years, with working graphics, WiFi and suspend.
Does it really matter that much which exact issues, on an opinion piece? Is he the first Linux user to have issues with Wayland and Nvidia? Come on, be reasonable and assume good faith, no need to be a stickler.
> If you install Linux on a random Windows-certified laptop, you should expect troubles
Where does it say you should expect troubles? Every article and post online is praising that Linux works just as good or even better than Windows, causing most of non-technical people to hop on the Linux hype train and immediately be disappointed with various issues around UI scaling, HW acceleration, Nvidia, Wayland, etc.
>and don't blame others for them
Who has he blamed for his problems? Which individuals? Read his text again. To me it reads that he had issues with Linux but non with W11, no victim blaming.
AFAIK every Linux distribution has a section on the website about recommended hardware, don't they? Yes, Linux is better than Windows in many ways, and many people have a good reason to say that. Maybe they should always add that you should choose your hardware carefully, which I did above.
> no victim blaming
The victims in this case are Linux developers and the whole Linux community, which is harmed by unsubstantiated claims that Linux doesn't work reliably. Nobody guaranteed ever that any OS would work on all hardware in the world. I'm tired of this myth.
> Does it really matter that much which exact issues, on an opinion piece?
What if I write an opinion piece that Windows is extremely buggy and slow on my unspecified hardware (which happens to be, e.g., a MacBook or oldest Raspberry Pi)? Does such "opinion piece" bring anything useful to the audience?
Judging by their post history I don’t think so unless this was a month long troll.
That being said, they seem to have been having problems so it isn’t crazy to think they would have moved to Windows and it just works as they want it too.
Oh I believe that they actually tried Linux, I just don't believe that they ever switched to it. I've seen this one before: they tried to switch to Linux, it ran/worked like shit (not really surprising, desktop Linux is a perpetual mess) and then they probably made this troll-ish post. That's my guess. I doubt they "switched" from Linux, though. I bet (without having done much research) that they tried to switch TO Linux, and it didn't go very well. That's my guess. Could be wrong, but there are several aspects of the post that make me suspect it's spiteful. If you're going to troll Linux communities these days, you absolutely have to use the term "distro-hopping" in your dissertation.
Boy it didn't take much scrolling there for the comments to get inane.
"the Micro$oft haters would have you belive that opensource is a wonderful garden of altruistic developers all helping out with each other's code for free.
Well if anyone thinks that I suggest they go and look at how many billions the companies like Debian and Redhat are worth. Nobody is working for free and it's simply do you pay for the ownership and get free support or do you get product for free and pay for support."
Yep. Those sure are the only two options when you use Linux. /s
> how many billions the companies like Debian and Redhat are worth
Er, why would you even mention those in the same sentence? RH is worth a fortune. Debian is a community effort with no company behind it. They're completely different.
Perhaps WSL2 won over this user when work needed to be done rather than distro hopping for years and fighting over drivers, desktops and window managers.
Windows with WSL2 is the best Linux distro anyway. No need to dual boot, format drives or whatever. Just run the system and move on.
Windows is easily the best desktop os right now. Linux requires a vast amount of intricate knowledge, constant troubleshooting, just to keep your system running. There is a way to not do this, but it needs you to never update the system at all. And macos is not even available for people to install on their pc, so that's not an option.
My windows PC stays updated without issues, never faced any strange issues with audio, graphics, nothing. My games run the best they can on my hardware, I don't have to worry about tinkering with stuff. What's not to like?
I feel like I live in a parallel universe. I have never, after two years managed to get Bluetooth audio working on my windows computer. Shit randomly breaks and I have to follow 2-hours of steps to reinstall some inane driver that should have come with the OS every couple of months. Joining a WiFi is a small adventure. This is a branded, prebuilt, premium PC by the way. Every windows machine I’ve had has easily been the most unstable piece of shit, I have no idea if it requires special knowledge to use correctly, but I don’t deviate from defaults, don’t do anything weird and it still never works properly.
The amount of technical knowledge and upkeep required to keep a windows PC working is insane.
I too like Windows and use it as my daily OS everywhere, but I am firmly against ever upgrading to Windows 11 and, with each update, Windows 10 gets more unpleasantly like 11.
Recently I tried to open an image, and the Windows Store asked me to pay 99 cents for the codec. Actually, for a video codec pack - it showed me as already having the codec pack for exactly these images installed. But they wouldn't open, only the Windows Store appeared asking me to pay 99 cents. Adding insult to injury, it seems that anyone who did this earlier than a couple of years ago got the pack for free - I was only asked to pay for it because I hadn't secured my rights at the time, apparently. Even though the Windows store verly clearly indicates that I already had the image codec installed.
[even more fun, the Windows store had additional prominent listings for what appeared to be these codecs, for free, but were very transparently third party spyware and not really the codecs at all.]
Windows 11 vs 10 feels in many ways analogous to me to Windows ME vs Windows 2000, at least in terms of user-hostility.
I have 3 Linux PCs, including a Steam Deck, and 2 out of 3 basically require zero specialized knowledge and just work. One of them has been that way for like a decade and circa every 3 years I just install a new OS to update things and it takes all of like 10 minutes. Steam Deck takes care of itself so far. Leaving the one PITA early model Ryzen, which doesn't really take intricate technical knowledge, but has an annoying bug or issue with boot where sometimes you have to boot it a couple times for the graphics output to initialize cleanly. I also have a laptop with Linux, and it has a swollen battery, which is probably my biggest gripe, but I'm not sure of the degree I can or can't blame Linux for that - it seems like it started when the laptop fell about 3 feet to a hard floor.
But yeah, no special technical knowledge required.
I had my barely computer-literate mother using Linux (Xubuntu or Mint) for about 10 years. When I initially installed it, I expected a call to 'put everything back the way it was', but it never happened. She managed to keep it updated, and nothing ever broke, unlike with Windows.
> Linux requires a vast amount of intricate knowledge, constant troubleshooting, just to keep your system running.
This is tangibly false.
I installed Ubuntu Mate on a really old laptop and gave it to my mom that needed a computer for email/YouTube/browsing.
It worked like a charm for years until the machine finally stopped working beyond repair that was economically viable.
> My games run the best they can on my hardware, I don't have to worry about tinkering with stuff.
Funny you say that - for some older games, I find it easier to run on Linux nowadays that it was to run on Windows and I needed to do some trial-and-error with compatibility modes.
I think that is maybe the case where you use more technical applications that require elaborate environment setups… but I have a classroom of 20 Linux laptops running on Ubuntu LTS and have had years of automatic updates with zero issues, and more than a decade on some of my backend systems which have been cloned through several hardware iterations.
Have you used linux in the last 10-12 years? Install linux mint. It's literally point and click. The only difference between it an windows is that it asks you to confirm the updates it installs, and lets you know if the updates have changed the information the software collects from you or has access to.
> My windows PC stays updated without issues, never faced any strange issues with audio, graphics, nothing.
On the other hand, after an automatic Windows update to my PC, my Bose wireless headphones were permanently unable to connect to it. They continued to work flawlessly with various smartphones.
It seems like retrieving files from my SSD should be a basic function of a general purpose OS, but they've gone and bungled it in order to push dependence on their cloud services.