I realize this is a Linux community, but I was wondering why you still hate Windows. I mean, I love Linux, but I will not argue that it’s more convenient to the average person in most use cases to use Windows, I recently had to switch back to Windows and I realized how convenient it all was and how I was missing so many things because of my love for Linux. But at this point, Linux is a part of my personality and my self-image and I will not leave it, but I gotta be honest, it’s pretty convenient being on Windows. So, why have you guys chosen to still stay on Linux? Some reasons I can appreciate include
- The terrible privacy policies of Microsoft. It sometimes makes you feel like your computer is not owned by you but lent to you by Big Tech.
- The community and the spirit of sharing
- The joy of “figuring it out” and customizing everything you want to the minutest details
- FREEDOM!!!
sudo suKinda ties into the previous points, but still one of the best selling points, the freedom to do whatever you want is liberating. You can run a server on it or you can create a script while knowing you have control over almost every FOSS app there is or just destroy your whole system with one command. Idk, feels good man!
These are the big ones, but one must realize you are sacrificing many things while not using windows too, productivity can be much greater there if you are a normie, it’s really convenient! So yeah! Give me your reasons! Also, how many of you dual boot?
Honestly, I don’t. I stopped caring about windows ages ago.
Maybe they are new users who miss Windows, so they are trying to find reasoning to stay on Linux. I as an old user have no more any special emotions about Windows. I play with it form time to time. But the OS is quite conservative because of its market monopoly and I don’t find anything new and interesting in new releases. It is not special about Windows, all consumer OSes are kinda stabilized now, and corporations do not want to experimenting and build new things.
So, I don’t hate Windows, I just don’t find it interesting for me. I use and will use it on a separate machine for some niche tasks, when they require windows-only software.
I own my computer. But on Windows, it doesn’t feel like that…
I find Windows significantly less convenient than Linux. It took a few years for my mindset to flip but there’s just no going back. Whenever something requires me to use Windows, I reach for a Windows virtual machine. Whenever I’ve been forced to use a Windows or a Mac machine for work, I’ve reached for a Linux virtual machine.
Great answers already, I’ll not repeat them. One thing I want to mention though is the interoperability of the Linux applications. Things work together well. With Windows (up to 10 at least, I haven’t used windows much in the last years) applications are mostly their own silo. In KDE it’s quite fluent. E.g. gwenview, the image viewer offers to open an image in krita, gimp, etc. It also offers an option to add a folder to the “places” list in dolphin (the file manager). Dolphin lets you quickly (F4) open and close a terminal at the current folder within its window. Small things like these make the system feel coherent.
The other big thing for me is the plethora of great apps you have out of the box. And the ease to install new ones without worrying whether you are the product.
Ayy thanks for letting me know that keyboard shortcut! I try to keep that terminal window open but sometimes I accidentally type exit and have to open it again through the GUI, f4 is much easier!
Because I don’t sit down at my Linux destop and feel like the product. There’s no ads or suggestions or popups or apps installing themselves or shit copying my files around in ways I didn’t really want or AI bullshit or anything even remotely suggesting I buy more shit, just… whatever the fuck it is I was intending to do.
The value in not having my computer act like a damn slot machine trying to get me to insert more quarters is, frankly, immense.
I don’t think the ability to destroy your entire system by one command is a good thing for a desktop operating system. On Linux random program with root rights can bring down your entire system by one poorly written script, but Windows at least has multiple mechanisms in place to prevent that.
there are too many little details to point out but windows just controls your experience too much. for example on a widescreen i don’t want to be forced to have the taskbar on the long edge. and up to including w10 the taskbar placement could be chosen. in windows 11 it’s forbidden… i installed a software to hack this but of course then explorer.exe breaks every 10 minutes.
the spirit of computer technology is a universal tool. Microsoft strongarms the user to be a tool. so no thanks
Each time I tell this story, I try to make it shorter and more terse.
Circa 2012 or 2013 I bought a Raspberry Pi as part of my ham radio hobby. With that I learned a little bit of Python and Bash, learned to type sudo etc, and kinda liked what I saw. Meanwhile, my Win 7 laptop died right as I was going back to school, so I bought a new laptop. This new laptop had two problems: 1. it came with Windows 8.1 and 2. it was a lemon. For most of the first semester going back to school I had no reliable laptop. The only modern supported computer I had was that Raspberry Pi. And for most of a semester that’s what I did school assignments and email on until I finally bullied Dell into replacing that lemon Inspiron they sold me outright.
So by the time I got a reliable x86 laptop in hand, Linux felt more normal to me than Win 8.1 did. So I fully switched.
That was 10 years ago now, and for the last decade I’ve heard Windows users do nothing but piss and moan about the new holes Microsoft has found to fuck them in.
So by the time I got a reliable x86 laptop in hand, Linux felt more normal to me than Win 8.
Know and respect this feeling, I am using MX Linux and have a very customized panel, settings and shortcuts. It’s home, even if it were to be wiped out, I would still put in all the effort to reinstall it.
But, I gotta admit, when Windows works as intended, it’s good for being productive and I technically should be learning how to use Windows properly as my work requires me to :')
My computers at work are on win 11 and good god, almost every time I log in I have to reset all my Taskbar setting (left instead of goddam CENTER, minimize the search bar, unpin the bullshit, only combine when full) and the most egregious issue of all is win11 doesn’t let you reposition the task bar anymore!
Installing updates… Do not turn off your computer
Proprietary software is a security risk, especially for US companies that can be legally served NSLs
Most Linux distributions and thus development feel like passion projects. Each time I try to revisit Windoze I feel like the product. That’s completely ignoring the customization I am provided in Linux. I don’t care about ricing. I just want a functional machine tailored to my use case, which is easier to do on FOSS.
Linux is great, and does a lot of stuff right… however…
I just don’t get the people around there sometimes. They’re okay with spending 1000+ hours jumping between 30 different Linux distros and customizing their DE, dealing with Wine / virtualization crap. BUT they aren’t able to Windows 10 Enterprise and read the manual to get a clean usable system in 1/1000 of the time and effort.
How ironic.
Never seen that guide. Does it actually work?
I tried using firewall and registry, it kinda worked but system was acting wild at times and eventually would implode. Could be a me issue but i was spending too much time on it.
Once i switched to linux and set it up, there is less maintenance
Never seen that guide. Does it actually work?
Yes, best results with Enterprise.
It won’t implode, and it becomes a zero maintenance OS.
Windows out of the box is full of crap but we all know that a lot of large companies use it and Microsoft is kinda forced into making it feasible enough for those companies. If you’re managing let’s say 500+ machines you can’t deal with the bullshit that comes with Windows 10 Home / Pro and systems that break every week.
There are also a lot of govt agencies and private companies with very strict security policies that can’t just allow Windows to connect to MS and leak information around. If you simply disable what you don’t need by following that manual things will really work out.
On the corporate world those changes are typically applied using AD, however, if you apply them manually in group policy they’ll stick and you won’t be bothered. Don’t forget to check the link every time there’s a major version because they usually add stuff.
I installed Windows 10 Enterprise 1709 on my main desktop in 2018 and applied the stuff documented there… I’ve been upgrading since then and it’s currently running 22H2 just fine. No policy regressions like some people claim.
Microsoft is forced to provide ways for big customers to make Windows usable and those aren’t going away anytime soon, they’ve a financial incentive to do so.
I see. But I did look around for Enterprise but I could not figure where to get it as a normie.
I am assuming that is on purpose?
I am assuming that is on purpose?
Most likely, “normie” don’t even know Enterprise exist…
With that said, you may find links here:
https://massgrave.dev/windows_10_links
Business ISO includes both Pro and Enterprise versions. On the same website you can find activation tools including HWID that will give you a valid digital license for your hardware that will survive a reinstallation of windows.
Just as a note if you’ve any Windows 10 Pro machines around you can upgrade them to Enterprise by just changing the key to a generic one under settings. A clean install of Enterprise would be better but you can still do it that way if you don’t want the trouble / spend more time with it.
Warning
If a user executes the Reset this PC command (Settings -> Update & Security -> Recovery) with the Keep my files option (or the Remove Everything option) the Windows Restricted Traffic Limited Functionality Baseline settings will need to be re-applied in order to re-restrict the device. Egress traffic may occur prior to the re-application of the Restricted Traffic Limited Functionality Baseline settings. To restrict a device effectively (first time or subsequently), it is recommended to apply the Restricted Traffic Limited Functionality Baseline settings package in offline mode. During update or upgrade of Windows, egress traffic may occur.
This guide just helped me realize why I don’t use windows. The fact that you need to remove and not add is why I like Linux.
I think i’ve heard about this… does it mean in normie terms: MS gets unrestricted internet lane to your windows?
No. It means if you upgrade a system from 21h2 to 22h2 Microsoft may have added new stuff in there that you’ve to review because if you connect it the internet right away those new “features” may connect to them.
Consider this example: Windows 11 before and after the Copilot shit. You can completely disable Copilot and other AI features using group policy however if you’re on the “before” version you can’t disable the feature because it isn’t there already, if you upgrade, the features would be there with defaults and on the first boot it might great you with a “welcome to copilot” that will connect to Microsoft.
People who spend that much time configuring linux are doing it for fun. Majority of people switching to linux have a working install setup in less time than it takes to install windows
And that’s okay, however those same people are the ones saying Windows is unusable because it would take a very long time to disable analytics. This is the thing, people aren’t consistent.
How is that not consistent though? If someone’s argument is windows is usable because it takes to long to disable analytics the argument isn’t invalidated by them configuring Linux for 1000 hours. Linux comes out of the box with no analytics so they would only be inconsistent if they spent that 1000 hours trying to disable Linux analytics. I enjoy configuring Linux but I do not enjoy configuring my system to be malware free.
Honestly, take away the PR blunders, bloatware, privacy nightmares, and ads, and I really just dislike how Windows works.
The file structure is the main one that really made me feel like Roddy Piper putting on the glasses. I was perfectly happy shambling around between Program Files this and LocalAppData that. As soon as I understood how logical and elegant the file structures that Linux uses is, there’s no way I could ever go back.
Also, things like Settings, Device Manager, Control panel, and 2 or 3 other separate GUIs all containing A, the same settings 6 times over, or B, all containing different settings that should be consolidated. It’s almost as if Microsoft can’t stick with a design language or feature scope to save their lives, but they also can’t get away with completely removing these old GUIs, so they just bury them and add another on top.
However, I can’t say I actually hate Windows. I cut my teeth in computing on XP, and I see XPs DNA all over modern Windows (the aforementioned Control Panel being a remnant). I think without all the added garbage, Windows is actually an incredibly powerful, albiet obtuse and frustrating, piece of software.
It’s been a long time since I used Windows myself, however one of the big reasons for switching was the inherent instability. At once point I was developing code in Visual Studio and constantly loading/closing quite a few different programs to test things out. Windows just didn’t seem to handle memory-recovery and I would have to reboot every week or two (usually because of the whole OS locking up). In comparison, I run a variety of software on my linux machines which can involve anything from testing code in multiple browsers to image editing to 3D CAD drawings. Sure that tends to drain the memory but when I close something I get that memory back. I’ll frequently get down to the last 100K of RAM, close a couple programs that may be holding large caches (Firefox really hates me having hundreds of open tabs), and then I’m right back up and running again. Reboots may occur about every 6 months.
I have to support other people using Windows at work, which reminds me how much I’ll never go back to it. My biggest frustration is that Microsoft is constantly changing things. Hell you can’t even directly reach the control panel any more, you have to run searches to find the specific item you want. Want to check the settings of a certain printer? Good luck, that doesn’t seem to be available in the right-click menu any more. It’s just all these idiotic changes making it difficult to actually use or maintain Windows. Why should I have to google how to find something when everything used to be under the control panel or a right-click away?
The hiding of the control panel is just extra pain for the fun of it. I know it’s the same tool they’ve had for many generations now so they’re hiding it because it’s ugly, but it’s the real way to get things done. Hiding it is just making everyone’s life harder, which is basically the Microsoft approach to OS design.
Kinda like dealing with Microsoft Office… You can’t find anything in that “new” toolbar design because so many options are grouped together in ways that don’t make any sense. I’m so glad I never had to actually use that garbage even though I did enjoy the older versions.
