alt Hacker NewsMicrosoft forced me to switch to Linux
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Windows 11 isn't terrible, as long as you go back to how it was in Windows 10. Disable everything introduced in 11.
I love the poem at the end
The author tried everything except switching graphics drivers?! That's like listening to the top 10 hits on broken speakers and declaring all new music is terrible.
Similar journey, different distro! I wanted a Linux gaming machine, but given my recent admission into the cult of NixOS, I went with Jovian.
Jovian is a NixOS module that sets up a SteamOS-like experience on top of your existing NixOS config. I was able to build & tweak the config before even building my PC. It booted first try and has since been working without hiccups. Now I am setting up emulators, which is relatively straightforward with nixpkgs :)
I did that years ago, at the end of Windows 7 and the beginning of the need for a Microsoft account.
I seem to have a much lower tolerance for enshitification than most people. I'm off Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn. Purely because they became annoying.
Don't worry, microsoft is putting its rust all over open source.
Windows 11 was bad before AI. Press the Start menu? Wait. That much latency was never acceptable and Windows should die like desktop Java did.
haha cool post btw RN not always runs on chromium/v8
> I'm gonna go full conspiracy nut here, but I bet it's because the LLM understands JavaScript better, and Microsoft can't be asked to pay actual humans to write proper native code.
Do LLMs like Claude really excel at JavaScript than other programming languages? Similarly does OpenAI prefers Python over other languages?
You can tell all the Microsoft executives use Macs at work.
I could talk about things better in Linux whole day. But besides popularity (so being preinstalled, proprietary software availability, being presented from childhood) is there a single reason to use Windows? Backwards compatibility, accessibility? Maybe?
I switched to Linux circa 2010 when I needed a word processor but didn't want to go to the store to buy Office (was pretty young and poor at the time). After some Googling I found LibreOffice and Ubuntu. I had used Suse Linux years earlier when I was a kid but it definitely wasn't ready for use (2003) so I was also curious about Ubuntu and the current state at the time. I installed Ubuntu, used LibreOffice for the thing I needed, and never looked back. Linux was a breath of fresh air and it did all the things I needed. I went to university using only Linux (2012-2016), opened businesses, did all sorts of things, all 100% on Linux. Nice to see everyone else finally catching up.
Also has always been interesting seeing people whine about Linux the whole time I've been using it problem-free, across 4 PCs and 16 years.
I'm keeping an eye on SteamOS. I love how it's much better at running games than Windows, the platform those games were designed for.
Going to switch my non technical gf to Linux she is pissed at Windows 11 lately
This seems to historically have been a pattern. There was a period where Windows Vista was forced on everyone and downgrading to Windows XP until Vista was better was forbidden.
Lots of people jumped to Mac or Linux at that time. There's article floating around that the Macbook Pro ironically was the best laptop to run Windows XP on via dual boot because it was so intel.
"All major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave) have native Linux builds. Full support. No compromises."
This is kind of true. It depends on whether you're doing Serious Stuff on MICROS~1 365 and probably other similar services, because if you for example want to do a download of email or files or whatever from an account in the compliance portal, then they force you to use Edge on Windows. There's a browser module that can only run in that context, probably due to some deep and obscene integration between Edge for Windows and the operating system, plus they get users.
Other than that I agree with the article. Windows has been way suckier than mainstream Linux distributions for a long, long time. Yes, there might be some driver or configuration issues sometimes, but it doesn't crash, it doesn't force system upgrade reboots, and Windows still has driver issues.
Once set up a Linux system tends to just tick along for years, unless you do something weird, which is more likely under Linux because you'll probably let curiosity bring you around more than it easily can under Windows and you'll learn to do stuff that carries more risk than what a regular user can under Windows.
And the nice part is that it is very rare that you actually, terminally brick your Linux. There is almost always some forum thread that tells you the steps to bring it back up again, whereas MICROS~1 support threads commonly consist of 'hello, did you try to reboot? if it didn't work, try reinstalling'.
>"If you're always finding the next reason not to switch, you're not looking for solutions, you're looking for excuses to stay complacent."
No, my friend. It is not the reason. I have over 50 apps installed, many of which are corporate applications, such as Teams and other Microsoft products. VMwaresing VMWare and WSL foLinux distributionsnux distros. The other things that Linux is missing are ShareX (has flameshot I know), no WhatsApp (PWA might work, but it is a hack). Google Drive that I use to share my KeePass databases (no GDrive on Linux afaik). And gaming is not 100% with linux becuase of anti-cheat (author mentions it).
The only thing stopping me from switching to Linux entirely is that I must find a way to port all of these without compromises. Reinstalling Windows is one thing; changing OS types is another. We all want to be Mr. Robots, but reality is different. It is like moving to a new house. Exciting but sucks.
Anyone have a recommendation on a decent cloud-based file sync tool ala OneDrive? I use OneDrive extensively but there is no official client for Linux and the unofficial one has some major stability issues. I'm willing to change providers but not willing to put in the effort to roll-my-own.
I'm in the opposite position. Been a Linux user exclusively for 16+ years.
But I wanted to build some desktop apps and look at arcGIS so I finally installed Windows 11 on a laptop my first Windows in nearly 2 decades.
This was a month ago and I haven't opened the laptop since. But I'm going to soon maybe!
Between all the telemetry and them separating workstation and server duties, Windows is a no go aside from a generic gaming console here.
Microsoft Windows is an entitled tenant that thinks it owns the property (your computer).
LOL :D
1500+ points for a switch from Windows to Linux :)
> I installed CachyOS, a performance-focused Arch-based distribution
Ooph. It's frustrating to see the community starting (again) to get purchase in public mind share at exactly the moment when it's least prepared to accept new users.
The Linux desktop right now is a wreck. EVERYONE has their own distro, EVERYONE has their own opinions and customizations, and so everyone is being pulled in like 72 different directions when they show up with search terms for "How do I install Linux?"
For a while, 15-ish years ago, the answer was "Just Install Ubuntu". And that was great! No one was shocked. Those of us with nerd proclivities and strong opinions knew how to install what we wanted instead. But everyone else just pulled from Canonical, a reasonably big and reasonably funded organization with the bandwidth to handle that kind of support.
Now? CachyOS. Yikes.
I honestly don't understand the hatred that Microsoft gets for most of the work they're doing in Windows. As I've stated before, most 'problems' people ultimately have are either configuration issues or hardware issues. And I still stand by this even as I've had issues over the years here or there.
I think the most recent 'production' Windows issue I've had was OneDrive failing to recognize it was syncing my data even though it was syncing. The status symbols for the files and folders wasn't showing up. But that's about it.
My gaming desktop is stable, my PC is rock solid, I run VMs on it (game servers, dev/test environments), and overall just absolutely 0 problems with Windows or my OS at all.
I do, however, have hardware issues semi often. One of my monitors doesn't turn off its backlight, for example. I've had Razer devices just flat out quit on me over the years (multiple Razer mice, at least a couple of Nagas, etc.).
I contend that most people would do better with Windows if they just didn't mess with it (don't run any of those tools proclaiming to "debloat" your OS), and make sure you read the hardware compatibility list of your systems REALLY hard. Incompatible RAM can cause significant problems, a lot of which is completely avoidable if you just read the RAM QVL.
The only thing that I wish vendors would do more is work closer with Microsoft to provide BIOS updates over Windows Update. But, most of these motherboard IHVs are absolutely terrible about doing BIOS updates anyway and require specific mechanisms to keep going correctly. This is in contrast to the Enterprise/Business devices released by HP or Dell which have a usually solid BIOS update track. And again, the only issue I've ever had there was incompatible RAM.
I just came here to say that is ackchyually GNU/Linux.
Obligatory:
It’s the year of the Linux desktop!
Marvellous, spot on. 10+ fucking points.
Just run arch. (+1 for terrible advice)
Once again, I don't really understand people who say Windows is easier. Take printer drivers. In windows you have a 'simple' wizard to install a printer driver. Except in my experience... it never works the first time and you have to fiddle. On Linux... I just bought a new printer, and it worked out of the box. My experience with most hardware today on Linux is out-of-the-box support while windows requires endless 'driver' installs. Even driver installs on linux are easier. Usually just drop a binary blob somewhere if you really need it and modprobe...
Again it's 2026... why is this so hard. Usually paid software is actually better and more feature-ful, but Windows is just not useful at all. The best use of Windows is WSL2
AI bubble pop, when???
No to mention that the cloud-based user system that they are forcing on us instead of local accounts. So much trouble.
And Copilot crap being shoved down our throats at every turn.
Don't even get me started on Teams.
Another day another "hey guys I switched Linux" post gets pushed to the top of the heap. These add nothing except create an echo chamber about great Linux is and Windows is the worst.
It's still disappointing how few folks know about gpedit and how much you can reclaim your own machine just by running through the local policies and setting them to "no, I call the shots".
I’ve been working at a school that uses a mix of Surfacebooks, HP Elitebooks and MacBook Air M2s (now migrating everyone to M4s!).
I used to prefer Windows for work. After the absolutely abysmal performance using a SurfaceBook Pro, never again. I’ve never had to deal with such slow performance in my life. I literally cannot get work done. Staff with Windows have constant problems, updates take forever, reboots aren’t very fast, programs crash, and (not OS related) but the new Outlook is universally despised.
I’ve never seen a company shoot themselves in the foot so badly as I’ve seen Microsoft do this of late. More and more staff want MacBooks , and are even ok with using a remote session (ugh) to access the one app that relies on Windows.
My experience is more like:
"I'll switch when Linux supports X."
Linux still doesn't supports X.
"Okay, but how about my X?"
Linux still doesn't supports X.
"Well, X is still missing..."
Trados Studio, good luck finding equivalent, I tried, and the alternatives are horrendous and I'm not gonna run it in VM.
Also I tried at least for son on his old computer live distro Mint from USB drive, everything works fine (unlike Zorin, which had problem with sound I think), but when I try to install it of course it doesn't detect Windows, same with wife's laptop.
So I have 3 computers: son's old laptop where I could install Mint - Linux Mint doesn't detect Windows
wife's old laptop where I could install Mint - Linux Mint doesn't detect Windows
my daily driver where my work SW requires Windows and there is no point installing Mint - Linux Mint detects Windows
I will have look at it during CNY holidays, if I will be able to install it alongside Windows (I need there Windows in case something would happen with my daily driver laptop).
I also plan to switch my father's old desktop to Linux Mint, but somehow I already know what will be most likely Windows detection status over there as well after son's and wife's laptop experiences. It works where it's not needed and it doesn't work, where I could actually install it.
Microsoft is its own worst enemy.
Microsoft had a chance make even better OS than XP and 7 and convince millions of users to use Windows.
Okay maybe with Office products the ocean was already red, but still, instead of disgusting its millions of users, they could make them happy.
I am not a firm believer that GNU/Linux distributions are a drop-in replacement for Windows. One can work around compatibility issues, but for non–tech-savvy people, it's just not feasible.
I switched to MacOS since the release of Windows 10 and never looked back, of course I did miss some apps, though using laggy windows was much more painful.
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Maybe it's stockholm syndrome but I still have no interest in Linux. Are nvidia drivers still bad?
I take an adversarial approach to Windows. Which started with Windows XP and its supremely annoying zip-files-as-folders approach. Sorry, but I didn’t want that, and I still gleefully rip it out of every Windows install I touch.
And then things started snowballing with every version.
Plus, I have elderly clients that got hopelessly lost on any UI after XP, so I had a lot of hacking-and-slashing to do there for not only them, but also myself. Like, just give me the option of a traditional XP-style start menu, goddammit. Thank goodness for StartIsBack.
But what took me about 6-8hrs of directed work with XP is now about 24-48hrs of work with Windows 11. Honestly, I am at the point where I just want to create a highly opinionated one-click configuration app that does everything for me.
And I would, if I still did as many installs as I was doing even half a decade ago.
Hmmm… as a DotNet developer… anyone interested in a spyware-eviscerating, copilot-extracting, settings-preserving app that allows you to retain a mostly-XP style look, and which remains resident to alert you of Microslop changing settings back?