Lets see in practice how much they are actually listening.
Now, this would be a great opportunity to actually get stuff like Dell XPS with Ubuntu on PC stores.
This seems to be claiming Windows is better because you cannot fine tune it. No one forces you to fine tune Linux. You can just buy something with Linux preinstalled and use it and skip the tuning and customisation.
Using various Linux distributions since kernel 1.0.9, Slackware 2.0.
I also did specify laptops with Linux preinstalled which I do not think were even available in the days of kernel 1.0.9
> and I have better things to do than uninstall Teams, LinkedIn, Spotify and undo some random settings after each update.
about Windows.
Same applies to Apple, Chromebooks and Android pseudo laptops regarding stores available with out of the box experience, the latter two while using the Linux kernel aren't certainly GNU/Linux distributions.
Has anyone actually achieved anything non-trivial with those? In my experience store help can only do what an average techy knows anyway. Anything else gets you sent to the manufacturer's support.
Like the Geek Squad counter in Best Buy? PC setup $39.99 OS Repair $149.99 (presumably also needs data backup $99.99)
I'm in NZ, and help with Windows is expensive here. I have mostly given up helping friends (many reasons including the "last person to touch it" problem).
Linux is a distraction - why do you strawman it? Raw Linux is only to be recommended to very few end users.
The last time I had to support Windows was while I was travelling in Argentina and my father asking for advice about his worry about a virus. His worry was the primary issue, whether he actually had a virus was secondary. There's no way I could safely hand him to a third party to support him (the only third-party people I might trust needed business accounts and had expensive chargeout rates). My answer was change your banking password and "use the iPad I bought you" for any sensitive activities like banking. I couldn't have solved his Windows issue (perhaps didn't exist), nor could I fix his worry. Windows laptop was the cause, and there was no way to work around it. And now he's fighting the side-effects of a forced Windows 11 upgrade.
Windows is an expensive answer, only suitable for a subset of users. Apple and Google have their downsides, but both are less confusing than Windows. Everything has its compromises.
Not to say that experience was invalid, but we've come a long way since the netbooks were a thing.
Maybe that wasn't my only experience?
Even Dell XPS, Tuxedo and System 76 aren't without issues in regards to 100% supported hardware.
And relative to the agentic, I saw a painful demo of using some voice assistant to change the scaling ratio. Which if search was better or anybody gave a hoot about cortana, should be an already solved problem.
A PR statement that amounts to "we still love you" with no action whatsoever means nothing. We've had years of terrible management decisions about Windows 11 at this point. If they want any trust back statements aren't going to cut it, they would need to actually do things that they don't like and that users do.
jmkni•2mo ago
MacOS isn't perfect either, but it is so much better in not trying to upsell you at every single opportunity
Just let me use my fucking computer lol
rincebrain•2mo ago
Windows used to have a solid technical foundation and was working on improving longstanding historical warts (font processing in the kernel, what could go wrong?), regardless of how off the rails the end user experience was getting.
Now, Windows seems to be rotting from every direction. The user experience is going straight for minmaxing data harvesting and antipatterns, and the technical underbelly is showing horrible problems getting into releases. [1][2], to pick a couple recent examples.
[1] - https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows/windows-11-...
[2] - https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/october-...
renegade-otter•2mo ago
Also, think about this for a second - you are supposed to wait every 30 minutes until "Microsoft finds a solution".
No one is finding a solution to your boot problems - this is some manager's failed attempt to shove AI everywhere, and the results are catastrophic.
blibble•2mo ago
they have even managed to screw up file explorer and the start menu
it's so slow I can see it render the interface, like watching compuserve render a webpage on a 2400 bad modem
(high end i9 box)
I bet it's not long until React ends up in the kernel too
theevilsharpie•2mo ago
The Windows kernel is also falling behind. Linux is considerably faster for a wide variety of workloads, so much so that if you're CPU limited at all, moving from Windows to Linux can net you an improvement similar to moving up a CPU generation.
pjmlp•2mo ago
up-n-atom•2mo ago
How did we forget about deferred rendering, offscreen buffers, etc. And why is it so darn slow? It’s a deplorable experience and it’s obvious strictly Windows users have become desensitized and numb to it all.
z3ratul163071•2mo ago
when switching to the new machine i realized i did not actually need windows at all already for 2-3 years straight.
so now I don't have dual boot. only arch with kde.
up-n-atom•2mo ago
At 1 point I was using https://looking-glass.io/ but half of my time is spent doing digital art and couldn’t part with the discrete gpu full time.
I had to take screenshots and that was as frustrating where it just works in macOS and all Linux DEs but Microsoft broke that as well.
chris37879•2mo ago
mindcrash•2mo ago
There are tons of people happily running mixed DPI setups with -at least- wlroots based compositors (although first time setup can be a bit tricky, as these are built by hackers for hackers)
what-the-grump•2mo ago
What Microsoft has done to windows 10 and 11 is ridiculous.
Why is my taskbar still crashing in 2025. Why does opening task manager spike my cpu to 100%. Search its 2025, search still broken. OOBE experience is a joke.
For crying out loud I don’t even care if you make the entire gui rest based and hosted in azure it would perform better than the trash running now.
At this point the Azure management portal has a higher SLA and uptime than my task bar.
graemep•2mo ago
Why? Look at it from Microsoft's point of view - upselling, showing ads, integrating AI is more profitable or sends the share price up. That gives them a strong incentive to keep doing it.