Microsoft has a history of creating new UI frameworks. IMHO it's the result of Ballmer's "Developers, developers, developers!" attitude, which I think is a good thing at core (court the developers that add value to your platform!)

But this results in chasing a new paradigm every few years to elicit new excitement from the developers. It'll always be more newsworthy to bring in a new framework than add incremental fixes to the old one.

React has had tremendous success in the web world, so why not try and get those developers more comfortable producing apps for your platform?

(Tangentially, see also the mixed reaction to Mac native apps switching from AppKit to SwiftUI)

AFAIK the Start Menu itself is still C++ and XAML however only the Recommended section is build with React Native [1]. Funnily or rather sadly, they seem to be quite proud of using it as seen in the video.

1: https://youtu.be/kMJNEFHj8b8?t=4m47s

Microsoft dropped the ball with Universal Windows Platform framework, I worked on one project using this framework and it was one the best. Our codebase run on both phone and desktop Windows 8. This was 2014-ish if I remember, and then Windows phone got killed.

The Win11 start menu used to have a fun bug where pressing Ctrl-Minus would open search with the phrase "zoom out". No other shortcut did this. Just Zoom Out. No idea how a bug like that happens.

Pretty standard for Microsoft lately. The old stuff is still there, we're adding a completely new stack adjacent to it so now you can live with the worst of both! The Windows 8 tablet interface and the Win11 wtfever that is still sometimes kick out a dialogue box unchanged since Windows XP.

One can only imagine what the product managers of like .NET think of all this.

The windows problem is every other OS release has included new UI libraries. Over the last 10 years they've made something like 5 different new ways to make native windows UIs. And, of course, they support all of them. You can use the classic Win32 API or you can use the newest WinUI 3

Typing "Visual Studio" into the new start menu may randomly trigger a Bing search for "Visual Studio" instead of running it, but on the other hand that makes Bings KPIs go up so it's impossible to say if it's bad or not.

Long time ago, I read a blog about how the user must absolutely trust the dialog boxes for Ctrl+Alt+Delete and Adminstrator passwords and why they were tricky to get right..

Then I hear that now ctrl alt delete is a webview. Its difficult to believe. Do you have a reference?

It takes over five seconds for task manager to open on my Windows 11 work laptop.

I'm not maining windows, but i dual-boot it on my gaming pc (no BF6 on Linux). In all fairness, Windows is no better or worse now than it was 5 years ago. Its not like its suddenly become completely unusable (or more unusable, depending on your perspective). Copilot fluff is being injected a lot of places, but you can largely ignore it and use windows as before. I do feel like Windows is on some sort of life support, that its not the main focus of Microsoft. Again, this is not really new.

Yeah. Crazy when the two most significant desktop OS's (Windows and MacOS) have native UIs where something has gone horribly wrong.

I am forced to use Windows 11 at work on my laptop (produced in 2023). When resuming after hibernation - from the time I press the power key and I see the the release-lock prompt screen with the password/PIN box - that's maybe 5 to 10 seconds; but from that point, until the OS actually responds to key presses and shows characters typed into the text box - well, that takes between 2 and 3 _minutes_.

And that's just one example. I curse Microsoft every day.

I'm honestly not sure Microsoft even cares about Windows anymore, to me it's felt like they burned everything internally during Windows8 and the ValueAct battles sealed it .. hell they even entirely removed the Taskbar back then

I've always wondered what things would be like the Microsoft break up went though, I really do think personal computing would be better off and the people involved would probably have even more money to boot

what has gone horribly wrong is the native UIs. they are completely worthless, across all OSes - difficult to use, limited, and in general suck compared to HTML/CSS.

I've worked with all major GUI frameworks, from MFC to Qt, they all suck compared with React/Vue

I am forced to use windows at work. Last week my web searches looked strange ... not getting the ussual results. Bing! Some windows update reset my default search from google to bing. Again! Microsoft's dirty tricks will never stop.

I am considering writing software specifically to feed random junk jnto Microsoft's telemetry cloud. I will call it "fusk-MS" and it will send random searches to Bing and fake screenshots of a linux desktop to copilot ten times a second until Microsoft stops acting like such a jerk.

Am I missing something, or hasn't Microsoft done this since Windows 9x with apps like Explorer and Control Panel heavily using web views internally rather than "native" WinAPI GUIs?

A loI of people don't know about this and I don't know if they really went ahead with it (been away from everything Microsoft professionally just about three years now) but at the time they were pretty serious about the idea to build all Office apps in React, so (according to them) they could more easily build "great multi platform experiences" from the same codebase.

Why they thought it couldn't be done with the .NET stack they already had (this was after the purchase of Xamarin and Blazor becoming a thing, mind you) still baffles me.

>OS manufacturer can’t be bothered to interact with their own UI libraries to build native UIs something has gone horribly wrong.

I honestly think that has way less to do with Microsoft, more of a representation of "software engineering" practices these days.

For example, Gnome shell has bunch of javascript in it, GTK has layout and styling defined in some flavour of CSS, etc.

I'm of opinion if you start writing OS userland in either javascript or python (or both), you should be fired on the spot, but I don't make the shots.

Most technical decisions aren't really driven by what makes a better end-user experience or a better product, it's mostly defined by convenience and familiarity of substandard software developers - with mostly and primarily web-slop background.

Whenever web dev comes up, we got people saying it's fad-driven development where a new framework comes out every week. Those people have never done real native development. React and Angular have been the solid stable bedrock of web frontend for ten years, and the churn is nothing compared to Windows, OSX, Android, and iOS UI dev.

  > OS manufacturer can’t be bothered to interact with their own UI libraries to build native UIs

> but if a OS manufacturer can’t be bothered to interact with their own UI libraries to build native UIs

But if they don’t use web tech it would be too expensive to build the start menu in a way that works cross platform!

Oh wait

Not a developer, what's the issue with React Native?

> their own UI libraries

It doesn't help that their own UI libraries are unfinished, unpolished, hot garbage.

I commend on using React, though. Like it or hate it, React is the closest to one true framework for everything.

How the start menu is programmed is of zero consequence to me.

I've been seeing it a lot on reddit as well, with a lot of non-technical users asking "how do I get started with linux?"

I think this is a real thing and I think a combination of MS demanding everyone get new hardware and Valve really polishing a lot of linux has gone a long way to get non-technical users to start seriously considering linux.

It's a huge added bonus that old hardware simply flies with linux. I have a 5 year old laptop that feels about 10x more responsive since I killed the windows install and put linux on it.

And I know that laptop will continue to fly because, unlike windows, it's never going to get any sort of serious bloatware added on as I update it.

KDE's income from individual donations has doubled recently, and many of the comments we get with donations are from recent Windows switchers.

As I wrote on HN just yesterday, I've been working on the Linux desktop for 20 years and the momentum has never been higher. 2026 will be fun.

I think it's a lot of different factors coming together. The success of the steam deck has really breathed life into the linux gaming scene - certainly for me personally, that was the main blocker to switching from windows.

That, plus (what feels like) a lot of recent advances in Linux. When I tried it... 2-3ish years ago? I recall e.g. fractional display scaling being basically nonfunctional. But when I tried again early 2025, it pretty much Just Worked (arguably even better than it did on windows), I just had to manually enable wayland. Pretty sure even that's just the default nowadays.

Which basically sums up my personal windows -> linux pipeline: bought a steam deck, was impressed at how well it ran my steam library; had my old laptop finally die on me, ran my life off the steam deck for a while; decided to eventually build a new machine, and figured I might as well try installing linux from the get-go. Everything worked fine on the first try, and I ended up not even installing windows.

certainly within my friend groups, I'm seeing more and more people entertaining the idea of making the switch as well. Admittedly, that's primarily "tech-savvy" folks though.

Indeed, it's the Linux super power. I've mentioned this before but my favorite linux adventure was, being a borderline penniless college student, having broken Toshiba Tecra 8000 from 1998 with a dead hard drive. But it had a working CD drive and USB port, so I got Puppy Linux 4.0 on a CD, booted from a CD, and installed to a 1gb USB stick and set it to boot from USB.

I had Dillo for a web browser, a stripped down version of VLC that could play 360p Youtube videos without issue, downloaded via Youtube-DL. I had XMMS which looked just like Winamp, and Sega/Nintendo emulation and even Duke Nukem 3D. For programs I had epub/pdf/djview readers, xpaint which is like classic MS Paint, feh as a hyperlightweight all purpose image viewer and background manager, a super lightweight RSI break popup program, and even a fully functional web server stack. It also had a window manager (JWM) that handled multiple desktops more intuitively and effortlessly than Windows does now.

It feels that way. I’m just one person but I’ve tried Linux several times over the decades and never stuck with it, for various reasons. Last year I got so fed up of Windows and tried Ubuntu. I can confidently say I’ll never install Windows again. Ubuntu has been good out of the box, but another difference to when I last tried Linux is the invention of LLM’s. Any issues I’ve had have been quickly resolved through troubleshooting with Claude/Perplexity, and I’ve used both to quickly learn the things I need. There were occasions last time where I spent literal days trying to fix things through searching and that was intolerable.

It might be the alignment of several forces :

- macOS is kind of crapifying, with Liquid Glass UI, iCloud services pushed down your throat… - Windows 11… - (some) Europeans are getting concerned about their complete lack of sovereignty on the tech stack, and Linux is one way to reclaim a small part of it. - LLM agents like Claude code have lowered the bar so much for any setup operation and bash commands.

All in all, it seems like a good time for Linux to broaden a bit its adoption.

Same here. I spent a good chunk of the evening just today messing around with Steam to see what I could get running on Linux. It's been a while since I tried in earnest, but I got all the games I wanted running (minus VR, but that felt like it was close). Even though I barely play any games anymore, it's the last reason I haven't wiped my Win10 drive.

Just anecdotally, I'm seeing a lot of momentum in my social circles. My friends and their parents (!!!) who are asking about Linux.

My "year of the Linux desktop" was in 2010, because even then everything was much, much faster on Ubuntu. (It helps major browsers were shipping 64-bit versions for Linux only, but Minecraft simply did not run on my laptop under Windows).

Does anyone else feel kind of sick (something like pity?) when they see people using Windows 11? Right click menus which have a loading spinner, advertisements littered throughout, and headlines from right-wing tabloids spammed in news widgets.

These past six years have been absolutely bonkers incredible for Linux, and it can all be attributed to Microsoft shooting themselves in the head with Windows. Proton work started after Windows 8 and really became usable in late 2019. Now we're seeing something again with Windows 11. It's awesome, hope it sticks.

Avalanches start with small movements ...

I'd argue that its drips and papercuts all over. Everything is trying to extract rent, and that makes things unreliable enough that even basic users are starting to notice.

Um, can't connect to the Internet? Nope, you can't play a game on your machine, and you may not even be able to log in. Service hiccup? Booted from whatever you were doing because we can't extort your if we leave data on your machine. And, oh, if you have the nerve to complain, you ungrateful serf, we will kickban you with no recourse. etc.

And this is before we even bring the AI bukkake into the picture ...

Statistics show adoption rate is increasing. According to [1] it historically took a decade to double Linux desktop market share, but market share has almost doubled since 2022.

Now, two in five PCs worldwide are running Windows 10, an unsuppoted OS. What are the user's options? Either buy a new PC, switch to Mac or run Linux.

[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/2025-could-finally-be-the-year...

If Microsoft could make me move to Linux, they will be getting a lot more people to switch. I was very into Microsoft's OS since v3.0, I used Outlook for all my email for decades. I recently moved over to Linux Mint and Firebird for email and have not looked back. All my Windows VMs are now Linux VMs. All of Microsoft's invasive "AI" was the last straw. I don't like the direction they are headed.

I honest felt like the tide had turned when my elderly parents both asked me wipe Windows and install Linux on their laptops this Christmas. So far they have both had an overwhelming positive experience. They say it's such a relief not to have to dodge the minefield of popups and upsells and ads.

I've even seen gaming YTbers I occasionally watch being fed up with that shit and moving or at least trying Linux

MS fucked up

Yeah, myself and several friends of mine with EOL Windows 10 PCs are looking to jump ship.

i think its just that its new year and year of the linux desktop is a meme (in the actual definition of the word kind of way) and the meme is growing over time

To temper expectations a bit, I’ve installed Linux recently on my HP Omen to pretty decent results. Still having some lingering issues, e.g the WiFi adapter going dead after a sleep. But have found the experience relatively similar to my recent windows installs.

For a laptop user who likes to game, you’ll definitely encounter some issues based on my experience. Better than it was 2 years ago, but it’s not a seamless experience (laptops!!) that you’d expect from posts like these.

For a Linux savvy user, it’s definitely worth the switch. I haven’t had any ads in months and it’s magical

This has been my experience too, with installing common (Ubuntu, Fedora, and other popular ones) distros.

The only exception is when we got a really new batch of Lenovo P1 laptops for work, and the patches likely were not fully merged yet. So as long as you’re not getting the first batch it is generally pretty good.

I left desktop Linux in 2010 because everything did not just work. Looking at the responses to your comment, it seems that basic stuff like wifi still doesn't always just work. If it's been true since 2010, I think the problem is systematic, and won't go away with "just one more year".

I wanted to try Fedora recently but it crashed over and over in the install on the screen where you select a time zone. Looked it up and tons of people had the same issue and didn't find any fix that worked for me.

Turned me off Fedora completely.

Tried two other distros on the same machine right afterwards with no problems though.

I've made the complete switch recently (been using Linux on and off for years, including WSL as well) after my pleasant experience with the Steam Deck and it's been fantastic, but not without issues. A recurring issue over the years of trying Linux has been WiFi drivers; I really can't afford to have WiFi not work as I can't run an Ethernet cable to my computer room. I get that Linux heavily relies on volunteer work, but a broken WiFi driver due to an update is a big roadblock.

Beside that though, I'm happy to have left Windows behind completely.

>> what really blew me away is that everything... just worked

It has improved greatly over the years. When I was using it relatively regularly in the mid-00's it still took a lot of effort to get everything to work.

But long-time users being amazed that buying a brand new linux laptop in 2026 'just works' says a lot about how far behind it is/was. PC's that 'just work' have been available for 40 years. That should be the starting point for any shipping product.

I had a similar experience after switching to Fedora Silverblue (but any of the immutable Linuxes will probably do - and over time, I'm sure most will be like that). Had set aside a bunch of time to do a major version update, everything fully backed up, and then it was done in a couple of minutes. Literally no different from any other update.

I've done more than a handful of major version updates since then, and almost don't bother to backup any more.

Which laptop was this? Could you share the exact model?

> I just bought a laptop that came with Fedora installed.

Could you share the model, please?

yeah, the "it actually just works now" is quite a powerful transition. for all my hardware, that happened like 3 years ago, but I've been Mac-bound for a decade until recently so I'm only really sinking in now.

Yeah I started in 98 or so and stopped in 2009. I should check back in.

That brings back my memory (again) installing Mandriva on my old old old computer which has a NVIDIA TNT2 graphics card. It was a completely nightmare back then to install driver for it in order to get it to output at the correct resolution and refresh rate...

Now I have a Thinkpad T440p with a GeForce GT 730M dGPU which NVIDIA no longer provide driver for newer Linux kernels, so I have to use slower nouveau driver.

Ah, something never change.

> It was faster to rg to search files, drop into WSL and run find for file name searches.

Fixed via the Everything app - instant search of any file in a nice resizable/sortable table

> if something is broken I have the control to fix it.

Instant search doesn't exist, how do you fix it?

>It was faster to rg to search files

This continuously drives me crazy on Windows and macOS. I am befuddled at the number of times where I'm searching for a top level subdirectory that starts with 'foo' but the search bar spins and spins..

Eventually I get fed up and just sort by name and perform an alphabetical visual search in meat-space.

And on laptops you may need to write a script to disable Bluetooth before the lid closes and re-enable it when the lid opens because Microsoft in its wisdom forced S0 sleep but didn't care to make it stable enough so a drivers can't crash your system during it.

Additionally there is no reliable mechanism to do so as doing it through Task Scheduler causes a race condition - will your script be allowed to run and finish before S0 sleep cuts power to it? You can not be sure.

Additionally if you got cornered into making an online account Task Scheduler doesn't even work with that reliably (for task that require privileges like turning off BT on lock and turning it on on unlock) so then you have disable the online account Microsoft manipulated you to make. Of course the failure is silent so you have to discover all that by yourself.

That is a a driver but Windows can also crash during S0 sleep because of its own updater failing to update some random app (like Microsoft Phone w/e that is).

On Linux it's just not an issue. The script runs on events and is guaranteed to finish. Random updates at random times won't happen either.

Why do you touch your bluetooth icon so many times?

ReFS riffs on reflinks - take a gander at XFS.

> Explorer loads instantly, etc. Even search is performant and gives decent results.

There is likely too big of a gap in "terminology".

For example, the file explorer startup is so "Instant" that even Microsoft officially added an option to preload the app to fix the delay. But if you don't notice / don't appreciate real instant, then sure, you won't understand the complaints. (or maybe your hardware masks it well enough)

Similarly, if you've never used Everything or better file manager for search, you might get used to the bad search results and call them "decent" since you're not aware how awesome it can be

I have the same confusion as you do. Note, I am not ignorant about Linux or MacOS. I ran Linux as my main OS from 2001 - 2015, still run it on a server. MacOS from 2015 - 2021. Since 2021 I am on Windows for my main machine (a laptop) and my gaming desktop.

Win 11 seems fine to me. I do see Copilot appearing everywhere. I don't see ads from MS at all, though- sometimes my vendor driver-management software asks me if I was to extend my warranty. Not Win11 fault, though. Start menu seems fine, phone integration is nice, OS runs very stable (in the very early days of using Linux 20y ago I marveled at how much more stable it was than Win98! That gap is gone now as far as I can tell).

My suspicion: I am paying for M365 (or whatever they call it now) and so they don't advertise it (or anything?) to me. I don't see CandyCrush or other random things added to my machine. All seems OK.

I've read that Win12 will be subscription-based. Maybe I am personally already there. For now, M365 offers me good value- I use MS Office and OneDrive. But if this changes I can see the equation balance shifting and I will then change platforms again.

TMI, I left MacOS because of Gatekeeper and the inability to repair hardware. Before that I left Linux for work interoperability and regressions I saw on my personal mobile hardware. Neither were "bad", really, I have experienced different trade-offs among the three choices I have used. For now, Win 11 is working just fine for me, with no fuss.

I suspect these articles are targeted at techies and tinkerers, where being able to do things their way is very important to them. This is reflected in the many mentions of tinkering with registry keys, which I never have nor felt the need to.

I personally run win11 for gaming, android for media consumption and proxmox for homelab and I think all of these systems are fine as is. They serve their purpose well enough.

My prediction is that steamOS (when it is released) will end up being the only mainstream Linux desktop because of its corporate backing. It would be interesting to see desktop Linux mimicking the android ecosystem, where different vendors provide a different skin on top of SteamOS.

I had to edit windows registry to fix the worst misfeatures of start & context menu. I never found solution to random wake up after suspend or missing icons after wake up - MS support was useless. Linux desktop even with non-zero amount of issues can't frustrate me nearly as much as Windows. All games I ran so far on Linux worked as good or better as/than on Windows. I keep Windows installed just in case some game really won't work, but combination of SteamDeck (Proton) and Vulkan did wonders for Linux compatibility kudos to Steam/Valve. And I would not want to do software development on Windows, that is number one reason I am using Linux (not that I am using Unreal Engine). Recent MS fever dream with LLMs only adds to general frustration with Windows.

Windows can be a good desktop OS. It just takes a lot of work to get it there. And you have to keep putting in a little more work with each update.

I set up a lot of PCs and what has astounded me is how much less work it takes. Unlike with Windows, most of the defaults are fine. I don't have to scour through all the settings after a fresh install. I only need to install half as many apps. I don't have to run powershell scripts to debloat everything. And I don't have to worry about updates undoing all the changes I've made in the future.

Is your windows 11 home edition or managed by corporate IT?

[dead]

Yep, we upgraded an old ~2010 iMac to 8gb and put Mint on it, good as new.

Yeah I've been running EndeavourOS on my 2015 Air (4 GB) and it is so incredibly snappy and efficient now. Makes macOS look like a lurching zombie of an OS.

Adding from Mac perspective, I am also keeping an eye on Linux. I’ve hit a wall with Mac window management, and find the operating system just gets in the way for professional use across multiple of their digital “desktops”. I have no useful way to isolate work streams, and would gladly move to something better.

The blocker for Linux for me as someone who wants some level of reliability has always been fiddling with low level config, but now with Claude Code, low level config appeals!

Like a modeling clay sculptor? I guess if a rock sculptor went too far, they would have trouble adding rock back.

“Runs perfectly” but it’s 2025 and you’re getting 2.5 hours of battery life.

> Cons: Battery life. Runs out in about 2.5 hrs but its an AMD not an ARM.

Damn, even my several year old Intel + Nvidia MSI GE66 can match that. Why is it so bad?

Really only Photoshop is the big gaping hole I feel as a linux user. Gimp is just atrocious.

There is a desktop webview of PhotoPea, but it's not the same.

Regarding the Steam Deck, Linux is _already_ 3% of Steam users: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey, while MacOS is under 2%.

I think it's also maybe worth pointing out that "non-enthusiast desktop OS user" is a segment that is shrinking. A lot of the people that aren't going to Linux are just going to smartphones only rather than buy a new laptop for Win11.

I can’t upgrade to Windows 11. I simply can’t justify a major purchase (now a major major purchase) for a new machine for a downgraded OS. My wife would never allow it and I would hate myself for asking. If Microsoft doesn’t relent, I’ll have no other choice. I have to believe there are a great many in my shoes.

Ever tried to get answers from "the Windows community?"

https://github.com/hahndorf/Set-Privacy

Still not the year of the Windows desktop.

Your describing the impact Steam Deck is having without SteamOS being available to easily install on a custom built machine. The tipping point is going to come this year when people who are building new machines have the option to install Windows or SteamOS. A lot of people are going to pick SteamOS.

Most charts I've seen indicate Linux already passed 5% usage worldwide.

I dislike windows 11 also and mostly use a mac these days and my gaming pc is dual booted with arch… but windows 10 and windows 11 for me are so very similar that I’m confused about the outrage between them. In both situations I turned off all the crap that was awful like the bloatware and so on, and then it’s kinda the same experience after that.

> there's apparently a checkbox to enable Linux support on EasyAntiCheat - and some don't "check" it

Because support doesn't mean full features. It's like saying iPad supports Microsoft Excel. At some point it's the same name for different software.

I think especially because it's under Proton, that means it's the Windows version of the game you're weakening to anti-cheat too. Even Valve's own VAC has issues running under Proton.

> FreeCAD

Here's the one that kills me. Not FreeCAD, but rather Zw3d. It has a fully complete, native Linux version. But it's Chinese language only! Even though the Windows version is fully international! Come on, wtf!

Mine was a few years earlier (YoLotD). Sadly, I kept up with the fags until 2018 ...

There are several reports of people getting 12+ hours out of a Lunar Lake based laptop running Linux. Still a ways away from the 20 Intel claims for them, but likely a more realistic scenario.

Intel claims Panther Lake will be even better, and we should be seeing results within days as there should be Panther Lake desktop released during CES this week.

Would be great... what I've heard is, Apple's incredible battery life comes from the vertical integration - they make everything, the laptop, the OS... so they are able to optimize it incredibly well. Even running Linux on a Apple Silicon Mac doesn't get you the same kind of battery life because of how much work the OS does putting different components to sleep etc. (though one could argue Apple's arbitrarily making it harder for Linux by making it so much reverse engineering work to get everything to go into sleep mode!)

I am most familiar with Debian but only headless. What would be a good choice of desktop environment? I’m looking to switch over the only windows computer in my house to Linux, it is primarily used as a home theatre and gaming PC.

Not just battery life, but also webcams and mics. Sure, you can use additional gadgets...but being able to open your MacBook and just talk to your coworkers is reason enough to keep an M1 Air around for the next years.

>I don’t find Windows 11 as oppressive as other seem to, but I have turned off most of what people cite as the issues.

So you debloated your windows but at any update you have to spin your wheels and try to remove any crap they put back in. At any time there’s the possibility you can no longer remove x or y. The vast majority don’t have the energy to play this game or don’t know how to.

> The terminal is going to be a non-starter for your average computer user.

My wife is the average computer user and has used Linux apps for years and never opened a terminal once.

"The terminal is going to be a non-starter for your average computer user."

My wife has no idea what a terminal is and does not care - she rocks Arch and has no idea what that means. The people that attend my uncle's PC clinic to have their "Win 10 that won't run Win 11" converted to Linux don't care either.

My Dad's PC will shortly be running Linux after I've taken him through MSOffice -> Libre Office + Scribus + (Evolution||Thunderbird).

I started off my early IT career as a trainer - I once did a day of DTP with Quark Express where I was given the floppies the night before. When I hear that Linux (actually LO etc) is incapable of doing whatever, I soon find that a deep discussion about what constitutes "incapable" generally turns into a training session.

For example I often hear about documents that apparently LO can't handle. That normally ends up with me teaching (proselytizing!) about how to use styles properly or even the real basics such as the four tab forms (L/R/C/decimal). Then we might segue into spreadsheets ... ahh, you'll want a array formula there ... "a what?" and off we go again.

Now, I have wandered off track here somewhat but I'm noting the other "not ready" convo that will often happen after we have covered how to find your mouse pointer or why Windows seems to still have two Control Panels and at least three half arsed IP stacks.

I do actually have a fondness for Windows, having used it since v2.0 at school in 1986ish. That fondness is rapidly going west along with VMware (consultant for 25 years).

I fucking hate being taken for a ride and basically being abused. Today, my company received an email from Broadcom telling us that we are no longer welcome as a reseller/unpaid support org. Luckily we started migrating our customers away from VMware some time ago and only the ones with the deepest pockets and greatest inertia remain. The rest are rocking Proxmox and I'm a much happier consultant too.

One day MS might tell my company that they have decided to dispense with our reseller/unpaid support services too, once they are sure that everyone is tucked up with a subscription.

Well, they can piss off too. I am capable of running email systems on prem (and do) even though I have migrated my firm from on prem Exchange to M365. I still point MX records to our place (Exim + rspamd) and run an imapd for some mailboxes. A calendar app is all that is missing.

What I hope I am getting across is that dumping Windows and co is quite a broad subject.

I think that your choice of Deborah and Ian's (bless!) distro is a really good solid starter for 10 but to be honest after a while you should be able to run any variety of Linux.

You should be able to install multiple Window Managers eg Gnome and KDE Plasma and all the rest at the same time and be able to select which session to use from your Display Manager (eg SDDM).

I have almost certainly overstayed my welcome in this tread but before I go, I will suggest that anyone who calls themself an IT (anything) should at least have a go at all available systems. Nowadays OS/2 Warp on something like 25 floppies is not a barrier to play (spin up a VM).

It's not that I don't have my own set of gripes about linux, but this wishlist is weird, at least to me:

- There is nothing wrong with sudo - or to be precise, it is good thing that administrative operations are explicit. And sudo is still less annoying than Windows "admin prompt" anyway.

- Why do you care? Use apt install, yum install or apk add, whatever your distro supports.

- It is not required, there are GUI managers, but again - why?

- Got me there. I don't use pen.

- Used touch on ThinkPad some years ago, it just worked, maybe depends on the laptop?

- Until 15 years ago this was true, but I haven't seen this happen since then. Debian here if it matters.

- I'm typing this on a 15 years old desktop (with NVME, admittedly) and it boots and feels faster than a new MacBook Pro I am testing. Linux accumulated much less, if any, performance losses. I agree that Windows and Mac both became bloated.

- I think doubleclick is the default way, at least in xfce? Or I might be missing what you mean. That said, I use keyboard shortcuts mostly as I try to avoid mouse for this.

With all that said, of course it will not look and feel the same as Windows. It is a different OS, with different priorities. I like it better than both Windows and MacOS, but maybe it's because I found the combination that fits me (Debian + XFCE). Maybe take a look at KDE and XFCE?

>- No sudo, or at least no conflict between "Sudo is dangerous and can break your system" / "You need sudo to do routine things"

This is an unreasonable ask. No modern operating system will give you this. You have to escalate credentials on macOS and Windows as well. Typically Linux asks you LESS often than either macOS or Windows. This or I don't understand what you're asking here.

>- No CLI required to install software

Just use GNOME Software or Discover (KDE). They'll install anything on Flathub or in your distro's repositories. Use a different distro than Ubuntu though, since they are non-standard with using Snap instead of Flatpak.

>Lag-free pen experience

I have the same amount of lag in Windows as in Linux on my Surface Pro 9. What does need work is palm rejection, but you can disable the touchscreen while the pen is in use. Not the best.

>Good touch support

GNOME and GTK 3/4 apps are by far the best for this. Not quite as good as Windows though.

>Less fragile. I shouldn't have to worry about the PC booting up into a no-GUI terminal after I installed something, or edited a file. (See point 1; don't make me edit system files to do routine stuff like communicate with a USB device without sudo, if they can break the system)

?????? ?????? If you mess with system files on any system without knowing what you're doing you'll run into this problem with an OS.

>Let me open an application by double-clicking it

Double clicking what?

The executable file in your file manager? That works.

A desktop shortcut? Use a different DE than GNOME or install an extension that allows desktop shortcuts.

"No CLI required to install software"

This seems very odd ... a quick one-liner install process is by far the simplest and most efficient way to install a piece of software ...

What other fragility and unnecessary complexity comes along with graphical installation tools ?

Is this a pain point for non-technical users you might prepare this system for ? Who do you have in mind when you specify this ?

Moved to NobaraOS back in April (gaming focused Fedora based distro) on my desktop tower and haven't used Windows since, nor have I felt the need to. Some minor tinkering with launch options for Steam games aside it's been a smoother experience than Windows was the previous 5 years.

The last Windows computer that I have is my work laptop, which is an acceptable compromise as far as I"m concerned.

> to see if they are in red alert to get users back

I don't think they much care, long gone are the days of consumer Windows being a cash-cow. And if you buy a machine with Windows on and put Linux over the top, they still have that little bit of money from you via the manufacturer. Adverts on the start menu and such, is not an action that would be taken by a company with any real pride in their OS.

I think they have moved on to other sources of revenue, so I don't think they care that much anymore.

Consumer Windows for those that care is an almost worthless business. Nobody will pay what was once paid for a windows license anymore. They will squeeze existing users who know no different in ways 2006 adware purveyors could dream of and monetize it that way. For the rest of non enterprise users, they don't care.

They would only start to care when they see their enterprise business migrating to Linux. As long as they have large businesses buying a suite of licenses for Auth, OS & Office, they have an amazing monopoly cash cow distribution platform. They can enter new markets, offer an inferior product for free as part of their suite & crush the competition.

Europe has shown themselves to be completely unwilling or unable to regulate the giant. So they stopped caring. They crank out cheap crap and charge top dollar because no one can stop them.

Not only is Linux on desktop "ready", it's been parent-proof for a long time. Sometime around 2012, Windows XP started having issues on my parent's PC, so I installed Xubuntu on it (my preferred distro at the time). I told them that "it works like Windows", showed them how to check email, browse the web, play solitare, and shut down. Even the random HP printer + scanner they had worked great! I went back home 2 states away, and expected a call from them to "put it back to what it was", but it never happened. (The closest was Mom wondering why solitare (the gnome-games version) was different, then guided her on how to change the game type to klondike.)

If "it [Xubuntu] works like Windows" offended you, I'd like to point out that normies don't care about how operating system kernels are designed. Normies care about things like a start menu, and that the X in the corner closes programs. The interface is paramount for non-technical users.

I've run Linux almost everywhere (work machines excluded) outside of my main desktop/gaming rig for over 15 years, up until a year ago when I switched my desktop. My last Windows install is on my retro PC (98SE), and it'll stay that way, because changing that would ruin the nostalgia.

Linux and freebsd have been ready for the desktop for me in 1998 already.

All of my Steam games work under Linux. For one or two, I gave to select a specific Proton version, but that's the only issue.

Try dual-booting, and see if your games work...

I game on standard Kubuntu, not a custom distro but to each their own.

They’ve done the research and they know x% will never change and that’s enough for them to monetize. So that’s what they’re doing.

My only hold out until this year was my gaming PC. When Windows 10 became unsupported, so did Minecraft updates. I tried Windows 11 just enough to get MC installed, only to find out I must log into the Microsoft Store to get it to run at all. The launcher installed, the desired versions downloaded and installed, click play, Store login required. Bedrock and Java editions. Just because... why not, I guess?

I decided as long as Rocket League (Steam) runs fine, I'll stick with Linux. It did, without any tweaking (other than telling it to use Proton because, technically, it has native Linux support, just not online play), and it used to require a ton of weird tweaking.

Every game I cared about in my Steam library worked too, way more than when I tried in 2020, also without any tweaking. So did MC Java edition.

The machine has a RTX 3080, which I almost didn't buy, because I've had issue with Nvidia on Linux in the past, but haven't had to do a single tweak this time.

The phrase itself has been a well established joke since I can remember.

I am not sure why people do this. Why post a link without providing any explanation of what the link is. It is quite annoying. No, I am not going to click the link to find out.

Quick note on #2 - there aren't really any issues with storing your encryption root passphrase in a file. If the file is owned by root, with no read permissions for any account, only root can access it. Since it's stored on an encrypted dataset, and your initramfs is as well, it's unreadable when the machine is off. Lastly, if anybody _does_ have a root shell on your machine, they can change the encryption passphrase without needing to know the current value.

In short, I'm not sure there are any real issues with having it on disk but unreadable by anybody but root.

I've run BTRFS on my server (and external drive backups) for over 10 years without issues. I would use BTRFS on my main rig, but Steam (or perhaps Proton in particular) doesn't like it, so Ext4 there.

> I only really ever play one game, so that's not a blocker for me.

I play loads of games; its mainly AAA multiplayers that aren't able to run on linux due to kernel anti-cheat - nearly everything else runs well with minimal effort using proton via steam (either installed via steam or imported as a non-steam game).

Music production is indeed still a blocker. I used to use Windows for that; I am now on macOS for work and music (much better than Windows in every way! I use an old trashcan Mac Pro with Monterey for my studio computer) and Debian for my personal machines.

I'd say about less than .00000001 percent of the world is in the same use case as you.

Ironically, MS Office is one of the best working Microsoft software on Linux, through Office 365. It works so well, that on my Windows work computer, I worked for months editing Word docs and Excel sheets every now and then, without realizing I didn't have Ms Office installed.

I'm no expert here, but my employer uses no less that three different SSO services (don't ask).., and all of them work under Linux.

Web-based really ought to work. Maybe your admins are being weird, and checking the user agent? Try using a plug-in to change your user-agent to Windows

I did fight with that a few years ago. Memory is that you can get through some steps running Windows in a VM to get thru MFA checks, and then close it later.

Those 3324 guests are all AI scrapers sadly.

For me it was the OneDrive ads on the lock screen. And, when I accidentally clicked "enable OneDrive" (a few years ago, this might have changed), IT TOOK OVER MY DOCUMENTS FOLDER AND TOLD ME THERE WAS NO WAY TO REVERT IT!

What devices are you expecting driver issues with? Even NVidia is not much of a problem these days

> If you stick with a major distro you're likely going to love it.

Even the smaller ones are unironically pretty fun to work with now-a-days. I'm currently rocking Gentoo on my stuff. After the painful setup, it's actually quiet easy to maintain.

If you want to understand why everyone is complaining about Windows, you just need to read what is said in those comments. On the other hand, if I want to understand why you think W11 is absolutely the best OS you've ever used, I... guess I'll have to ask you. So, would you mind sharing what makes W11 great for 'professional use'?

I would also recommend Mint Cinnamon for anyone. Everything worked out of the box, super fast and simple. Just a breath of fresh air compared to the bloat of the big corporation OSes these days. It’s like being back in simpler times with Windows XP where things are snappy and it doesn’t get in your way

I've loaded up omarchy and I'm really digging all the keyboard short cuts and window tiling.

Except ProtonDB website reports that completely blocked games make up 3% of the top 1000 Steam games.

Meanwhile, 84% is perfectly playable (some with minor tweaks).

https://www.protondb.com/

Have been for a while, had Windows for games, but now Fedora runs them well enough I don't have to care.

About half the reason I used windows so much is for vtubing software. It barely works on windows, getting it working on Linux used to be a process fraught with agony and torment.

Same since I was 3. Windows 2000, XP, 7. With 8 it was obvious they didn't believe in personal computing anymore, for me that was the end of the "Decade of Windows Desktop". I'm naive cause I did and switched to Linux without looking back

Can you run MacOS on your 4 year old Intel Dell laptop?

I've been running Fedora full-time for years and have not experienced any of the issues you have listed here. Some of your issues sound like hardware to me?

As someone who plays competitive FPS at quite a high level (I compete in the Contenders division in Valorant's Premier tournament system, lots of fun!), honestly even that's not the biggest deal. I'll eventually get to a point where the only reason I have a Windows install at all is for Valorant. Everything else will be Linux.

BAR is definitely one of the stars of OSS game dev.

How does this work? Do you give the AI read permissions on your system, or is it just running arbitrary commands?In the latter case, is it prompting you before each?

Just install Mint/Cinnamon and forget about it.

Did, past tense. I'm no longer using it.

wait until you see you can use wine..

There's a stickied ad at the bottom that says

> The AI Agent that gets your codebase Copilot & Cursor letting you down? Try Augment. Install Now

Why not just use an Android phone?

This is the perfect iPhone user meme.

yeah ios26 is objectively a piece of shit

Linux isn’t perfect but it’s far away from the compromises one needs to make to use Windows. It’s weird frogs are comfortable slowly boiling even when Microsoft turns on the heat to the max.

Agreed. I’m not at all surprised that they are the main contributor to anubis, which is also very obnoxious.

Then you'd probably get along pretty well.

Yeah, I started to appreciate Windows more recently. In fact I prefer it over MacOS and Linux. WSL2 it's great when I need a linux shell.

File manager is one those reason. Damn, there is no alternatives to DOPUS.

Don't get me started with AutoHotkey. There is nothing compared to that.

I get your general point but as others said things are getting better.

> Want to find any file anywhere instantly (including newly created)? No, impossible, there is only NTFS Everything app that does it.

Fsearch exists and is pretty much exactly that afaict. https://cboxdoerfer.github.io/fsearch/

I've been on linux since 2014; I'm an ocassional user of windows, booting into it with much regret to deal with client's issues. I generally dislike working with MacOS... but for someone used to macOS I see no meaningful degradation of the kind there is with windows - your time is better spent earning/buying/setting up an m series mac air.

Write a strongly worded letter to the manager (apple). It's easy on other hardware.

GUI apps often come in Flatpak[1] these days - which are sandboxed[2] like you are expecting. Flathub[3] is the primary place to get GUI apps, but many distros also have their own app store too.

Flatseal[4] is a GUI that allows you to mange the sandboxes/permissions. You can also manage them via cli if you prefer.

For CLI apps, you can use distrobox[5] or toolbx[6].

[1] https://flatpak.org/

[2] https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/basic-concepts.html#sandb...

[3] https://flathub.org/en

[4] https://flathub.org/en/apps/com.github.tchx84.Flatseal

[5] https://distrobox.it/

[6] https://containertoolbx.org/

> On a smartphone at least I can easily assign permissions to each app.

Those permission categories are so coarse grained as to be useless. In order to pause a media player when a call comes in I have to give the media player access to the phone app. Pure madness.

Flatpak gives you a lot of permission controls for GUI apps and you can similarly sandbox a lot of CLI tools with toolbx or distrobox.

I had to set up a machine owner key in my motherboard's UEFI to get my 4080 working, but it's fine enough. I haven't had any issues with nvidia drivers since.

Can you ring the same bell at the GTK and GNOME folks? The GTK4 thing with hamburger menus that replace everything is just a mess. I stumbled on nemo the other day while looking for nautilus. That… was a breath of fresh air: compact UI, menus, features, etc.

It’s painful seeing FOSS making some of the same mistakes as corporations

was it this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZTOjd_bOQ

"... there simply is nothing for open source to copy but ux-decline ..."

I beg to differ. Tiling window managers like ion, ratpoison, dwm, et. al, and the simple and elegant tooling that accompany them are a wonderful example of UI innovation.

UI/UX designers who copy, and iterate on, infantile eye candy have only themselves to blame.

So at that point a ton of people are going to be forced onto Linux?

I don't really disagree with you. More and more I see people living with just their phones. Personally it's not for me, but it's getting more and more prevalent. Even some business just have people using iPads/tables in the field, no point in lugging a laptop around when you're only using one or two apps and email.

For developers and systems administrators though, we're going to need the desktop for decades to come. Nothing else comes close in terms of flexibility. Just think how many SREs live in the terminal still. Not because there aren't UIs and applications, but because those applications can only be installed and configured from the command line.

Accounting is also a long way away from dropping the desktop, again, they need a ton of flexibility.

Microsoft is probably "correct" in that it's not really worth spending to much time on the desktop, because the average user launched a browser, Steam or some custom piece of software and just stays there all day. It's not really financially viable to make something good for the last 10%, on the other hand, those people would probably be fine with being stuck on the Windows 2000 or XP UI.

I’m not sure about that.

To me, Windows has been the best experience with gaming (yes, including the stupid bullshit anti-cheat software that shouldn’t exist in the way it does, the devs making it truly only support Windows), the desktop experience has been tolerable, especially with PowerToys and FancyZones in particular and that one registry change to restore classic context menu. Still feels like fighting against the OS but passable.

Linux has been the best experience for regular computing and software development, especially since a lot of the software I deploy runs in Docker containers, so getting more or less the same user land is nicer than subtle Windows incompatibilities (e.g. bind mount permissions, line endings, crap like that). Also package managers are just nice and some desktops out there are really good for daily driving (personally I like Cinnamon, but KDE and XFCE and others all have their place).

Apple stuff has been the best in regards to the hardware integration and coherence (e.g. the experience of using a MacBook or iPhone and everything working without any driver issues on other OSes), having a pretty polished desktop experience, but also super weird things such as no proper AA on generic external monitors (e.g. 1080p), limited hardware ports, oddly locked down ecosystem and odd support choices (e.g. the dance you gotta do to install development apps, the PWA situation) and just weird choices in regards to keyboard layout and how the mouse feels compared to both of the other OSes. Okay development, not great gaming situation, worse than Linux at this point.

I like my iPhone (reduced Liquid Glass transparency) and MacBook Air (great for notes or travel), but daily drive either Windows or Linux. Tried FreeBSD for one of my servers too but hardware support wasn’t wide enough, not sure what the desktop situation there is like.

macOS is particularly annoying and gets in the way more than an OS should. Windows can be tamed and the Linux experience can be perfectly smooth depending on distro and hardware. I assume macOS can be tamed as well, but it seems like much more of an uphill battle.

I’m going from macOS to linux currently. It was the hardware obsolesence that kicked things off but I definitely wont miss the constant nagging about my iCloud being full

Can’t stand the MacOS UI philosophy and built in software. Gotta skip. The hardware is pretty good though.

tbf mac is starting to get pretty bad too

The ai and liquid glass rollouts do not inspire confidence in the future of macOS.

I've moved from macOS after 15 years to Linux in past year (niri + DankMaterialShell), it's mostly better aside from missing Miller columns in Finder.

I would go on full macOS, but I can't afford a Mac Studio at the right specs for what I need right now.

Why is Linux worse? Why, for example, is KDE worse that the macOS desktop?

The monster that ate Windows have already started eating Mac OS.