Microsoft's decision to push ai features into their OS got me to remove windows and install Linux this year. After gaming on windows pcs for 30 years, I'm now gaming on Linux and honestly, couldn't be happier.
Windows 10 was spooky enough that I held on to Windows 7 as my work operating system until 2020. The constant telemetry, settings that would switch themselves back on a reboot without any indication, forced updates with forced reboots that followed, and Cortana intermixing your file system with web results were all giant pier spanning red flags that told me Microsoft had turned fully hostile instead of just adversarial. The main thing to remember is that everything I just listed was there from the start in June of 2015. Then Microsoft stopped trying to be Wilson Fisk with Windows 11 and just came out as Kingpin.
I installed CachyOS (KDE) about 2 years ago and I’m obsessed with it, it’s so satisfying to tinker with. I also game on it every day. Recently invested in a AMD GPU just because it has a better driver story in Linux. I can’t imagine going back to Windows.
Edit: Shout out to SteamOS for getting Linux to where it is for gaming, incredible.
Agreed, also on CachyOS and loving the momentum Linux has lately! Let's finally all be free of Microsoft's bullshit "maybe later" tactics etc.
Gaming on Strix Halo in Linux is an absolutely amazing experience, even though I have a 4090, just because of how silent and low power it is. Valve and the rest of the Linux infra guys really performed a miracle.
I have a basic music player web app that can run decent on the cheapest android phones. It's buggy but has been pretty solid on my 3k$ pc (lmao).
Yesterday it was so sluggish I had to disable every other app on Windows AND restart AND disable my network (bcus who knows wtf windows is doing in the background). It ran fine (normal) after that.
Windows is so unbearable, my Mac and Linux (former ms) laptop from 6+ years ago operate better than this pc it's driving me up a wall.
MS is literally stealing my pc specs, they don't know wtf they're doing
My big company is all in on Copilot. So far it’s actually been a net plus. I like it and it makes my life easier. That said, when offered a PC or Mac I chose the Mac, because Recall. And all the Microsoft shenanigans on my home PC made me switch to Linux permanently.
If Windows at home ran like Windows does on corporate PCs, people would like it better. They’re biffing that hard.
Not sure why you are down voted so much. I have a Mac for work, and I'm told that the chips are literally the fastest thing you'll experience. By a margin.
I have 3 different security scanners forced by security and it is much slower than my personal Linux Lenovo. Even just the basics with UI responsiveness that in my experience Macs have always been pretty good at, to the detriment of applications.
My experience of the ARM Macs has been through work, I personally owned Intel Macs and they were generally crap but felt faster than this.
If you have 3 security solutions installed and get pwned, oh well, it's not your fault. If you had none and get pwned, you get the blame, even if the attack vector wouldn't have been protected by most security solutions.
> "If Windows at home ran like Windows does on corporate PCs, people would like it better."
People here on HN are willing pay Google (monthly even!) to remove ads from YouTube. People here are willing to pay for RHEL Workstation or Ubuntu Pro Desktop for enterprise deployments. Yet people here are unwilling to pay Microsoft for the correct Windows edition that provide the features they want. Their problems are self-inflicted.
> the correct Windows edition that provide the features they want.
The correct Windows edition is LTSC or IoT or whatever BS name they've since come up with. It's a license that can only be obtained from a reseller (since putting up a form that takes credit card details and spits out product keys is too complex for MS) and has a minimum order quantity (I believe you can pad the order with cheap "client access licenses" to get around that).
I ran the version that shipped with my Dell. It was paid for. And mostly I want the ability to turn things off that retail Windows won't let you turn off.
People use the OS that came preinstalled on the machine. Not even Windows took off until Microsoft started armtwisting OEMs to preinstall it (Windows 3.0, 1990). And coming soon from Microsoft: locked bootloaders that prevent you from installing another OS! You know, because security, and no one installs alternative operating systems anyway.
Uninstalled Windows for Ubuntu a few months ago and never looked back. The constant coercion to get you to use their shitty products is unbearable. I want my operating system to get out of my way and let me work.
Users have "brutally rejected" pretty much everything that Microsoft have done since MS-DOS. Some cohort of users will get incredibly angry about any conceivable change to mature software. Add in the people who passionately hate anything AI-adjacent and you've got a recipe for a social media firestorm that probably doesn't accurately reflect the sentiment of the average user.
Personally, I think that Copilot for Work is a good product that does useful things. I use it daily. It isn't particularly groundbreaking, but it's nicely integrated with the wider 365 ecosystem and it has saved me a bunch of time on tedious tasks. The usual LLM caveats apply, but I just don't get why someone would be so annoyed by an entirely optional feature.
Microsoft has a bad history of actually making things optional. Required Microsoft account, Edge automatically importing your browser history and syncing it to Microsoft, OneDrive automatically copying your files and sending it to Microsoft, the repeated attempts after every update to make Edge default again...
They haven't given a fuck about the user experience for years and that's colliding with AI exhaustion. There's well over a dozen different things you need to turn off in various parts of Windows at this point to make it accept your decisions and stop throwing ads in your face, all tucked behind multiple layers of dark patterns.
But in the end, you could run what you needed, and move the garbage they threw in, out of the way. Now, I can't run Minecraft without logging into the MS Store. That was the last straw for me, and I built my entire career on Windows and .NET.
Microsoft's decision to push ai features into their OS got me to remove windows and install Linux this year. After gaming on windows pcs for 30 years, I'm now gaming on Linux and honestly, couldn't be happier.
Windows 10 was spooky enough that I held on to Windows 7 as my work operating system until 2020. The constant telemetry, settings that would switch themselves back on a reboot without any indication, forced updates with forced reboots that followed, and Cortana intermixing your file system with web results were all giant pier spanning red flags that told me Microsoft had turned fully hostile instead of just adversarial. The main thing to remember is that everything I just listed was there from the start in June of 2015. Then Microsoft stopped trying to be Wilson Fisk with Windows 11 and just came out as Kingpin.
I installed CachyOS (KDE) about 2 years ago and I’m obsessed with it, it’s so satisfying to tinker with. I also game on it every day. Recently invested in a AMD GPU just because it has a better driver story in Linux. I can’t imagine going back to Windows.
Edit: Shout out to SteamOS for getting Linux to where it is for gaming, incredible.
Agreed, also on CachyOS and loving the momentum Linux has lately! Let's finally all be free of Microsoft's bullshit "maybe later" tactics etc.
Gaming on Strix Halo in Linux is an absolutely amazing experience, even though I have a 4090, just because of how silent and low power it is. Valve and the rest of the Linux infra guys really performed a miracle.
I did the same on my gaming machine in early 2025 to get well ahead of the Win10 EOL. I installed Nobara and have been really happy with it.
Literally doing this now.
I have a basic music player web app that can run decent on the cheapest android phones. It's buggy but has been pretty solid on my 3k$ pc (lmao).
Yesterday it was so sluggish I had to disable every other app on Windows AND restart AND disable my network (bcus who knows wtf windows is doing in the background). It ran fine (normal) after that.
Windows is so unbearable, my Mac and Linux (former ms) laptop from 6+ years ago operate better than this pc it's driving me up a wall.
MS is literally stealing my pc specs, they don't know wtf they're doing
My big company is all in on Copilot. So far it’s actually been a net plus. I like it and it makes my life easier. That said, when offered a PC or Mac I chose the Mac, because Recall. And all the Microsoft shenanigans on my home PC made me switch to Linux permanently.
If Windows at home ran like Windows does on corporate PCs, people would like it better. They’re biffing that hard.
> If Windows at home ran like Windows does on corporate PCs, people would like it better.
How much of that experience is a result of your corporate IT removing all the bullshit with group policies that Microsoft has introduced
Corporate IT, with enterprise site licences, has access to turn things off you can't turn off with retail Windows.
I’ve always found IT to add bullshit, break things, and just make life harder.
Not sure why you are down voted so much. I have a Mac for work, and I'm told that the chips are literally the fastest thing you'll experience. By a margin.
I have 3 different security scanners forced by security and it is much slower than my personal Linux Lenovo. Even just the basics with UI responsiveness that in my experience Macs have always been pretty good at, to the detriment of applications.
My experience of the ARM Macs has been through work, I personally owned Intel Macs and they were generally crap but felt faster than this.
Just IT folks rubbing their hands together evilly, “Yes! yes!! This will make our users’ lives miserable! Mwhahahahahahah!”
It's just extreme levels of ass-covering.
If you have 3 security solutions installed and get pwned, oh well, it's not your fault. If you had none and get pwned, you get the blame, even if the attack vector wouldn't have been protected by most security solutions.
> "If Windows at home ran like Windows does on corporate PCs, people would like it better."
People here on HN are willing pay Google (monthly even!) to remove ads from YouTube. People here are willing to pay for RHEL Workstation or Ubuntu Pro Desktop for enterprise deployments. Yet people here are unwilling to pay Microsoft for the correct Windows edition that provide the features they want. Their problems are self-inflicted.
> the correct Windows edition that provide the features they want.
The correct Windows edition is LTSC or IoT or whatever BS name they've since come up with. It's a license that can only be obtained from a reseller (since putting up a form that takes credit card details and spits out product keys is too complex for MS) and has a minimum order quantity (I believe you can pad the order with cheap "client access licenses" to get around that).
I ran the version that shipped with my Dell. It was paid for. And mostly I want the ability to turn things off that retail Windows won't let you turn off.
People use the OS that came preinstalled on the machine. Not even Windows took off until Microsoft started armtwisting OEMs to preinstall it (Windows 3.0, 1990). And coming soon from Microsoft: locked bootloaders that prevent you from installing another OS! You know, because security, and no one installs alternative operating systems anyway.
I am so happy that my current employer is farther on its way to deploy Linux on the desktop than deploying windows 11.
I’m amazed they’re still posting about it on social media.
They have to try and claw back some of the sunk cost somehow. Microsoft made a trillion dollar bad bet and have decided that it's your problem
Alienate the people who carry your water, end up in the dumpster with the rest of the trash.
Why? Cause those are the people who know you better than you know yourself, and who know how to beat you at your own game
Uninstalled Windows for Ubuntu a few months ago and never looked back. The constant coercion to get you to use their shitty products is unbearable. I want my operating system to get out of my way and let me work.
Users have "brutally rejected" pretty much everything that Microsoft have done since MS-DOS. Some cohort of users will get incredibly angry about any conceivable change to mature software. Add in the people who passionately hate anything AI-adjacent and you've got a recipe for a social media firestorm that probably doesn't accurately reflect the sentiment of the average user.
Personally, I think that Copilot for Work is a good product that does useful things. I use it daily. It isn't particularly groundbreaking, but it's nicely integrated with the wider 365 ecosystem and it has saved me a bunch of time on tedious tasks. The usual LLM caveats apply, but I just don't get why someone would be so annoyed by an entirely optional feature.
Microsoft has a bad history of actually making things optional. Required Microsoft account, Edge automatically importing your browser history and syncing it to Microsoft, OneDrive automatically copying your files and sending it to Microsoft, the repeated attempts after every update to make Edge default again...
They haven't given a fuck about the user experience for years and that's colliding with AI exhaustion. There's well over a dozen different things you need to turn off in various parts of Windows at this point to make it accept your decisions and stop throwing ads in your face, all tucked behind multiple layers of dark patterns.
But in the end, you could run what you needed, and move the garbage they threw in, out of the way. Now, I can't run Minecraft without logging into the MS Store. That was the last straw for me, and I built my entire career on Windows and .NET.