this is why ive finally ditched windows for everything.

ive been a dual boot linux user for years, but still booting into windows for games and work.

no more, i just couldn’t take the:

- constant nagging

- ads for all of microsoft’s other shit that i absolutely did not want to use. copilot, onedrive, xbox, and on and on.

- the nonstop “sign in to your microsoft account” etc…

- settings i very deliberately changed reverting back on update.

- how stupidly long updates would take.

i just finally went to linux for everything. i was concerned about work stuff, and i ahve to admit, its absolutely definitely not perfect, but it still … feels? … better. i’m not sure this is the right phrase, but it just feels more fun. i feel good when i diagnose a linux bug, like productive or something. that feels more like fun to me compared to the dark patterns of windows which feels frustrating. if that makes sense.

i’d rather spend 20 minutes fixing a weird quirk on linux than the deal with the assault microsoft is constantly throwing at me when using windows. and id absolutely rather put up with a feature that isnt fully complete yet on linux than deal with dark patterns on windows.

and gaming? at this point, if a game doesn’t work on linux, i just play something else that does. there are just way too many choices of rad games that run good on linux. it does help that the games i’ve been playing lately (like cyberpunk) run a bit better on linux anyway.

the only holdout for me at this point is video and photo editing, i have to break out my macbook for lightroom and premiere still. but from what i understand linux is moving very very fast in that area so i’ll just use my mb until those are caught up. the day i can ditch my adobe subscription will be the type of “let’s go to the bar and toast with shots” kind of day. and from what other people say, it’s very close.

the cherry on top for me is, weve moved our parents machines to linux mint. my gf and i jokingly wonder if they would have even noticed if we hadn’t told them, firefox just works for their facebook and amazon lol. huge bonus that i can update their machines with a quick ssh apt update which takes literally seconds vs windows which sometimes takes half hour plus.

FWIW every one of those issues can be solved by running Win11Debloat one time (except update length which is variable based on hardware, but auto-update/restart can be disabled).

https://github.com/raphire/win11debloat

Persists after updates, and is a straightforward easily auditable PowerShell script enabling/disabling Windows/app features via approved OS provided API interfaces without any hacky brittle workarounds that eventually stop working.

It's the first thing I install on any fresh Windows 11 install for the past 4+ years. I get more ads on MacOS thanks to their lovely Apple TV, iCloud, etc push notifications than I ever see on Windows 11 (≈ 0) after running it.

I've updated hundreds of times across multiple machines and it's never stopped working. I'm only reminded it exists by its absence whenever I use an out of the box Win 11 install on a new PC which is painful in comparison.

I actually prefer debloated Win 11 to plain Win 10 because I get all the benefits like vastly superior multi monitor support on 11 with basically zero negatives.