I will say, for anybody reading and finds it in any way uplifting, I have been a Windows user for 30 years, been a .net developer for 5 years at one point, groaned at how bad the 'Linux desktop' always was, but this year I finally switched to using Linux instead of Windows and I think it's because the inflexion point is starting to hit more of the masses.

I think saying "I'm a _______ guy" with any brand or company filling that blank can be a big problem. Most companies are there to make money and loyalty is often a one way street.

From my view it is more productive to find out what you like about something and always be open to maybe finding someone else who can deliver on that. And sometimes things that we thought were essential are not. You might even find something new to like.

"I'm still a _______ guy, and I always will be."

No matter what trademark you put in the blank, this is not a healthy thing to say.

I was a "Windows guy" from Windows 2.0 to Windows 10. Now I'm a "Mac guy."

These operating systems aren't my family members -- I'll ditch them if I believe that switching is worth getting over the learning curve of a new environment.

Apple has an even bigger loyalty problem. For them and Microsoft it's arguably good, but it's bad for users, even the loyal ones. It might even be bad for Apple and Microsoft long term.

It likely just means they will always prefer certain classic aspects of Windows over how other desktop OSs do things. I’m largely in that boat as well. Of course Windows could get so bad in the future that another OS will be the lesser evil. Or another OS could adopt those preferred Windows things. But it won’t change the mentioned preferences, hence “always”.

> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be.

There's a semi-common saying that it takes seven attempts for someone to successfully leave an abusive partner. Give him time, I guess.

I’m my experience, unwavering Windows folk are simply power users who find *nix shells burdensome.

exactly, he's part of a problem

Who is better?

Goes the other way around too: Linux will only have a good desktop environment when it's users will be willing to leave it.

Agreed. I had the version of Notepad++ that got popped and was being nagged by Fusion 360, so I decided to burn everything down, get a new SSD, and install a copy of Windows 11.

Holy sh*t! I haven't had this bad a Windows install experience since Windows 95.

The first big obstacle is getting all the Secure Boot/TPM 2.0 BIOS settings right. When you don't, you simply get "Can't install Windows". No debugging information. No clarification. No details. Shades of the day of having to blindly set the I/O interrupts and addresses on Windows. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiiit, Fail. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiit, Fail. etc.

Then the second obstacle is getting a local account installed. The solution was obscure, but straightforward. Finding that solution on the glop that has become the Internet? Bleaaaaagh. Everything has to be a bloody video for something that's one stupid command. And all the AI systems aren't useful because their horizon is too old and Microslop keeps changing the command; presumably because too many people are using it (How dare they not make cloud number go up! Brrrrrrrrr!) After all was said and done, I got "lucky" because I actually bought a retail copy of Windows 11 from Best Buy--it has physical media and the image was "old" enough that the "old" way of doing the install still worked (Shift F10 to prompt -> OOBE\BYPASSNRO -> reboot for those who want to know)

At last, after almost 90 minutes of farting around, Windows starts to install. And install. And install. And install ... FOR HOURS! WTF IS IT DOING! The target machine is a smoking AMD desktop with SSD and a gigantic amount of pre-shortage RAM on fibre. How in the name of all that is holy and unholy do you install that slowly on that powerful a machine?

Finally, everything gets installed. And I reboot ... to no video. Oh, no, I bet it scrambled the drivers. Sure enough, I move the HDMI from my AMD card to the AMD integrated video ... yep, there it is. Sigh. Let's go get DDU and uninstall the dumbass driver that Windows Install dumped on there. Download, download, install, reboot to safe mode, clean, install proper driver, reboot. Back on my main card, now.

Finally, let's dump a recovery image because I sure don't want to have to go through this gigantic PITA again if something goes wrong. Plug in the drive, can't find it ... ah, had a Linux image that needs to be wiped out, my fault ... need the Windows partition editor, so launch and erase ... wait, why can't I edit anything? ... oh, right, dumbass, you need to launch it as Administrator ... close ... open the menu, there's the app, right click menu ...

WTF! There's no "Run as Administrator" so I can't edit the partitions! Right click a couple of other programs ... some of them have the "Run as Administrator" but some of them DON'T. And there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which is which. Curse. Swear. FINE! Plug drive into my Linux laptop, kill the partitions there, and eject. Plug into Windows ... which now sees the drive and creates a recovery disk ... happy happy joy joy <rolls eyes>.

4+ hours! Not even exaggerating. <cries>

And because I'm a glutton for punishment, I decided I'd put Linux on the old reformatted SSD. Since I used Windows for gaming about as much as Fusion 360, I figured I'd go for something Linux but gaming-optimized and snag Bazzite which I'd never used before. Download, install, login, connect to Steam, run game.

Total time: no more than 20 minutes.

No fighting about cloud login. No video card problem. Games are running fine.

Anyone still using Windows as an individual nowadays is completely and utterly daft.

(And, as a side note, this is having a knockon effect--I finally went looking for an alternative to Fusion 360 and signed up for OnShape just so I can dump Windows permanently)

Came here to post this, what an asinine thing to say.

I would kill for Windows 7, but with security updates only. It was the last truly great OS Microsoft made.

I started on Win 3.1. Win95 and 98 were so cool. Then I thought Win2k Pro was the best thing that even happened. WinXP was probably the last time I cared a lot about Windows. Vista looked cool. Then things just got worse and worse.

I have a medium-range gaming laptop running Windows 11. Dedicated GPU, extra RAM, etc. It "boots to ready" worlds slower than any of my low end Linux laptops. Windows is just so ungodly slow.

Somewhere around 2020 I changed my work laptop to use Linux only, no dual boot. MS was pushing 20GB patches, which is unreal. At the time I had AT&T DSL.

I had been using Linux on and off since the early 2000s. But the 20GB patches and 'ransom-ware' pushed me to Linux full time.

There are no apps I use that are 'windows only' so Im free. Windows is made by a mega-corp and it's just gotten out of control. "Update and shutdown" always just reboots. You can spend ~1hr doing an OS update with multiple reboots. I can install Linux + LibreOffice in ~15mins or less. A full Linux updated is like ~5min to ~10min, or less.

I was a windows guy for a long time. I went to macOS. Despite the complaints I've seen on the internet I've been very happy in macOS land. Someone mentioned that while macOS has "never been worse" the difference between windows and macOS "has never been greater".

Granted things like gaming might influence someone to not make that move.

Are you me?

Well, technically from 3.1 but everything else checks out.

Those are survey results. Can't draw many conclusions from self selected survey responses. The survey lost Linux responders.

imo, the 'grandparent' type user should really be on an ipad or chromebook etc. (unless they have some specific software needs). Too easy to get unwanted stuff running on windows and it needs admin.

I use an iPhone (out of choice) but what MFA doesn’t work on android?

I just use Mauth, its on fdroid. Pretty much everything is that common OTP standard. Same with OTPclient on gnu/linux

My only bad experience is duo mobile, but I expect it is equally bad on iOS

> I’d agree for a home computer Linux or macOS are the only sane choices now.

Unless you care about gaming at all. Sure you have the Linux evangelists who talk about how much better support has gotten (it has!) but there are still huge glaring holes.

I run MacOS for everything except gaming. I'm not even that big of a gamer but it's the only sane option there.

> Entra and try telling the bank you’re working for that you have to have a Linux notebook. You’ll get laughed right out of a job.

Entra id private access will cover that (and it frankly can't become the norm soon enough). For an extra $5 per license. I wouldn't worry too much about that part of Microsoft though. They always knew how to sell stuff to enterprise. You gotta wonder what their Windows division is doing though, but maybe they just don't want private customers.

Unless you work a job where you're not in control of the OS you're using, which just happens to be most of the non-dev office jobs out there. Dismissing Windows problems with "just switch to Linux bro" doesn't really help.

Came here to say this.

What makes Linux not an option? Is there specific apps you need to use? Or IT policies? Or something else?

The company I work for got bought by a big conglomerate, and I managed to stubbornly hold out using Linux for a really long time. It turns out if your workplace has adopted “Bring your own device” type policies, that often means you can auth with enough services that working on Linux is feasible.

I have a friend that worked for a big corp back 15 years ago managing Macs. At one point they told him they were going to can him and switch the Mac uses to Windows. Didn't go anywhere when he pointed out he was managing all their Mac users. And he was managing 5 times as many Macs as his coworkers were managing Window Boxes.

“But what if people used notepad without our permission?!” -dev/boss somewhere

> I only use my windows machine because I can swap out parts stuff and is more hackable but macos is so much more beautifully designed.

That's definitely a good reason to use a PC instead of a Mac, but why not run Linux on it? Then you'd get the best of both worlds.

Reminds me of this MacOS problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959

> if it’s installed locally and you have permission, it runs

On macOS, only after you've run xattr -c to remove the Gatekeeper block on non-Apple approved apps.

Markdown support and the like are useful but their need to cram AI and account sign-in into it definitely seemed over the top. When they got rid of Wordpad I kind of anticipated them trying to pivot Notepad more in that direction.

For what it matters, Windows Server 2025 still has the edit field in a wrapper.

Is that old still provided?

If Microsoft wanted, it could make Windows good.

On the other hand, no matter how much time or money the Linux community gets, the desktop experience will never be good.

This means that our only hope at having a good desktop OS is Microsoft changing course.

It certainly feels that Microsoft is accelerating in this race. There have been almost weekly 'a new reason' that Windows 11 sucks and is user hostile. Previously it would be only once a month.

> Fyi, in Mint if you search application for "notepad", "Text Editor" is the first result. That is curated search done right. Search for notepad on windows and you probably get an ad for a travel website.

So it was with Windows Vista, Windows 7, even Windows 8. It's not an impossible ask for Windows either.

Cinnamon is cool and all but I prefer KDE Plasma. It seems to eliminate all the pain points Linux desktop environments typically have and everything just works. Pair it with Debian and you got a solid system.

> That is curated search done right.

Adding keywords in the relevant .desktop files should be enough to make this work in other DE's too. I just tried it in KDE (by adding a 'comment=... (like notepad)' line in ~/.local/share/applications/org.kde.kwrite.desktop), it works as expected

It just makes sense to show travel deals. Why would an OS show text editors when searching for text editors? Obviously it can show something far more lucrative by matching what it knows from spyware AI taking screenshots of your every action.

Please don't recommend Mint. It's slow to merge upstream and I find noobs installing it all the time then complaining about features missing that were already in upstream for two years.

Notepad++ isn't [Windows Notepad](https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9msmlrh6lzf3)

Edit has not shipped with Windows since Win9x -- which is to say, it hasn't shipped since Windows required DOS -- and what you linked is an homage project, not the same program.

And you know what else was included in versions of MS-DOS that shipped with Win9x? Edlin. The editor so basic most people can't figure out how to use it.