My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore

At this point, I have lost count of the number of times that I've left my perfectly working Windows computer at the end of my work day, only to return to a completely broken computer that won't boot the next morning.
I find this to either be a lie or self inflicted. I manage a small fleet of a few hundred windows systems and all updates have been fine for years.
In the windows admin user groups there are more than a few that are deploying updates within 24hrs of release to thousands of servers and workstations and have not reported issues.
Lastly I think that tech bloggers say things like this to get clicks, so they can get ad revenue. Then they also tell you how to disable updates so they can get more clicks and ad revenue.
It’s disingenuous and probably harmful to be telling people to disable updates that lead them to be exposed to vulnerabilities.
- I hate Windows for all the monetisation and privacy issues but I never really had problems with it killing my computer.
  
  I had a Windows 10 update fuck up my laptop for about 15 hours until it somehow magically unfucked itself and started working again once.
  But thats about it
  
  The primary issues that I faced with Windows (Win10 nearly a decade ago) are
  very slow updates
  constant 100% disk usage after boot
  high background process usage
  [Rare] messing with my dual partition setup
  The final error which caused me to format my PC -> After logging in, the desktop froze, no icons showing up, no task manager.
  If I had never used Linux, these wouldn't even seem like problem; just normal Windows shenanigans. But after using Linux, I can never go back. I don't know how much worse/better Win11 is now but can't be bothered to try.
  
  A future Linux enjoyer spotted
  
  My biggest issue with Windows (at least on my desktop) is with my GPU driver for my Intel Arc A770 LE. Windows Update will not stop automatically “updating” my driver to a driver that was made about a year and a half ago. It’s too old that Intel Arc Control doesn’t even work with it. It doesn’t matter how I install the latest driver from Intel, I can DDU the old one, install the driver and wipe all custom configurations or just install it normally. Nothing works, upon the next reboot, it automatically says “there’s an update” and installs regardless if I want it or not. The driver installation also has a 50/50 chance of blue screening my whole system when installing, both the installation from Windows update, and from Intel. The Window driver “updates” for my driver have also just happened randomly with no notice, they’ve occurred during hour long Blender renders, crashing it and wasting hours of my time redoing work. (This is all on Windows 10). It is frustrating to deal with
  Meanwhile, my Linux install on the same computer just runs mesa and I’ve had no issues at all with my GPU. (Or any issues with drivers really, it all just works).
  Although it didn’t “kill” my computer. Whenever I still used Windows, it would spontaneously install this outdated driver which would either blue screen or crash whatever I was in the middle of doing such as working in Blender, playing a game, etc.
- It's kind of disingenuous of you to proudly say, "I don't use the same version of Windows that this person likely does and I don't have the same issues that this person does so they must be full of shit".
  
  It's kind of a wide disparity for something that's so locked down, though. It's not as though one person is saying they get occasional issues and the other is they often have issues... it's one person basically saying their own personal computer is nigh unusable and the other providing an example of a large number of examples of that being extremely unlikely...
  It's far more likely this individual is fucking up their computer on a regular basis, or has a very high bar of usability that is broken any time there is even the slightest hiccup or inconvenience.
  
  There aren’t many versions of windows since 10 and 2016. They are all very similar now.
- That's the difference between the Home and Pro versions though. The things that generally break on the Home versions are all the things not generally enabled on a domain controlled Pro version. Thisbis more about Microsoft just being bad at small updates versus these giant roundup packages they like to ship.
  
  What things? Home just doesn’t have GPO as far as I know.
- The interesting thing for me is that I own two different surface pro 7 tablets. I have one for work and one for home (now that work doesn't require me to bring my own device anymore). The work surface has windows 10 pro on it. My home one doesn't, The difference is very interesting. The IT team have disabled a lot of stuff on my work surface that I don't even have access to on my home unit. I don't often have bugs from updates breaking things at work. I do at home though which is enough for me to perhaps upgrade the windows key on my home unit someday. If I don't install linux first which is a possibility.
- I find this to either be a lie or self inflicted.
  "I've never experienced what you describe, so it must be either imagined or your own fault."
  I've seen this nonsense over and over again in communities of all kinds, most often in tech forums (where there are always a few participants suffering from a big-fish-little-pond effect). It's a very rude and foolish bit of human behavior.
  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
  
  I think the guy you're replying to is probably right, just because you can tell from the article the author is not really an expert or advanced user.
  But I upvoted you because honestly we do not get enough random Shakespeare on online comments lol
  
  Not just me, many others.
- It’s disingenuous and probably harmful to be telling people to disable updates that lead them to be exposed to vulnerabilities.
  That is probably why Microsoft forced updates on people in W10.
- My two cents, I could say the same as the author. My Windows work laptop most of the times cannot wake up from sleep (you know, opening the lid after it's closed) so I have to force a restart. There's a 50% or less chance that Bluetooth and WiFi won't work at all (they won't be displayed on Windows, like it's not even a feature) after I turn the laptop on, so most of my pre-work morning is restarting the laptop until it's working as intended. It's the third laptop I got from them, they're different models but they're all HP, and they all had problems. The Macs and the same HP laptops running Linux have none of these issues.
- It's not harmful to tell average people who run windows to disable updates, because you can't disable the updates as a single-license scrub.
  (Theres usually some hacky bullshit to delay or block updates, but they break constantly and you have to keep finding new ones, because Microsoft thinks of their userbase as stupid babies who can't be trusted with their own hardware).
  Also, you live in your own personal slice of Windows control with your hundreds/thousands of systems being managed with group policies. I have no doubt that you don't see issues, because your company chose a few models of laptop or desktop and know how they'll react to the updates. You can turn off the annoying shit, and choose specific updates at specific times. Microsoft doesn't want to piss off their corporate customers, especially the ones with massive spending contracts with Dell/HP/Lenovo.
  Thing is, outside of you - and your groups of other corporate windows admins - the general user (with varied hardware/software configurations) don't have the safety of catching issues on a few test machines and delaying a deploy to the fleet, or even the option to delay updates at all, and they're screwed over constantly by random broken drivers, system setting that aren't respected between updates, and bloat/backdoors that you can't opt out of.
  It is you who is being disingenuous, by suggesting that the windows update system has no flaws, because you operate in an extremely controlled environment with tons of safeguards and - ironically - way more autonomy.
  
  My personal devices haven’t had the issues described either and I install a lot of different software and hardware. I’ve also supported a lot of friends and family. I didn’t want to bog down my comment with my own blog post.
- I can kind of feel the author on this. I'm in charge of a lot of "special projects" at work that basically come down to, "figure out a way to replicate this extremely expensive technology or software using low cost or free alternatives". It ends up being an unholy mix of programs and hardware that is held together with duct tape and super glue and any minor perturbation means something breaks.
  
  Sounds like less of a Windows problem than an individual problem, though.
  Blaming Windows cause your Frankenstein machine breaks often is disingenuous.
- There have been two distinct Windows updates in recent memory that have broken things.
  The one that stopped network printers from working, and you had to change a specific GPO setting which was not available in Intune at the time, meaning I had to do it manually on each computer.
  The one that removed all shortcuts to Office 365 apps from the desktop and start menu, necessitating a repair... manually on each affected machine.
  So it does happen on occasion. It's not as bad as in the XP days, but it still can be a little sketchy at times
  
  I had an update completely and permanently bricked my webcam, and another that fucked up my audio (but eventually got fixed months later).
  
  Odd, i didn’t need to address either of these.
  I would have scripted it for Intune.
- Doesn't even need updates, in the 10 years I was on Windows it didn't want to start after shutting it down again like 7 times
  I hated having to reinstall every year
- I‘ve had several faulty Windows updates in recent years and my machine is pre-built. And going by the threads I sifted through in search of solutions I am far from the only one. It‘s perfectly fine to not have the newest update at all times so as long as you update once a month when you can afford a potential faulty update. Having an older than most recent version is far from your biggest concern regarding security. I would even say it‘s a non-issue compared to good old fishing mails.
- I've been using windows 11 since general release and have had zero issues. Not with ads, not with updates, not with one drive. Well, unless you count clicking away pop-ups to use new features from time to time. Not once has a file been saved to onedrive.
- Seriously, anytime people make complaints like these about windows, it just tells me they are either
  Tweaking their system in ways far beyond what the OS is designed for (which is fine, but then don't blame Microsoft when updates break your system)
  Doesn't know how to use a computer
  Knows how to use a computer but is willfully ignorant so they can rant at MS and get clicks
  Incredibly unlucky and not representative of the general population
  
  Tweaking their system in ways far beyond what the OS is designed for
  That's the issue: the way microshit is taking windows is not acceptable for an increasing number of people.
  Why would I allow Satya the creep to control my PC that I paid money for.
  Also, why are they putting ads into it.
  Updates rolling back privacy settings, although this stopped now.
  Forced online accounts.
  At what point is it too much for you? I bet over next few years microshit will get to you too lol
  
  #1 is by and far the cause I see when people ask me 'why did thing break?!'
  There's a lot of 'Well, I edited the registry and then deleted these two files and installed this 3rd party software so that it looks like it did in Windows XP!' floating in my circles, which almost entirely correlates to the people who are mad that their install is, yet again, broken/not working as expected/having weird problems.
  Of course, people are doing this because Microsoft can't stop shitting up Windows in a way that annoys people, and thus leading them to do things that maybe aren't the best idea.
  So, in summary: it's a land of contrasts, but stop adding bullshit nobody wants Microsoft.
  
  The thing that usually kills windows is shitty drivers. So people with different hardware can have completely different experiences.

- PERFECT!
- I don't understand why this meme [template] exists. Did they rocket this guy up there to shoot him? Why would be be in space if he couldn't be trusted with the truth?
  
  I think the original showed the earth being a flat disk and the first astronaut says "it's really flat?" And the second one says "always has been". But is about to shoot him to keep the knowledge of it safe from the masses.
  But in this case, the one with the gun is Microsoft.

I just got a new laptop and was genuinely gonna try windows 11 and wsl for my coding needs. But in first boot, it demands internet to do updates. Ok, I connect to coffee shop wifi. Nope, won't do it because it can't handle the click through screen to accept wifi ToS. Fine. I take it home, where my Internet is great but has a glitch where it drops out for a few seconds now and then. Turns out that windows will literally cancel updating and demand I reconnect and restart for the kind of drop that I barely notice day to day. So I gave up, plugged in my ArchLinux thumb drive, and mkfs.ext4 before rsyncing my entire old computer to it
- You use Arch Linux but can't fix your wifi?
  
  Actual autism I know
- You sound like a Linux veteran.
- Haha.. NO
  
  the fact the install media can't provide a working desktop by itself is pathetic.
  
  I'm down but if it can't handle a 5s dc then rip
  
  The fact that it’s a requirement - and moreover automatically creates and integrates with MS cloud services - is what people don’t like.
  Nobody is arguing that it’s a bad idea to let your chosen distro installer automatically pull the most up-to-date packages.
  
  They gave it access to the internet twice.

Let's be honest, very few people who talk about how much they hate Microsoft will even consider alternatives
- It's not a failure to consider the alternatives that slows adoption, it is the very real material problems with those alternatives.
  It's not fair that a multinational corporation gets to wield virtually limitless power to starve the alternatives of oxygen and create as much friction as possible in the process of switching, but it is a very real problem, and blaming the users won't solve anything.
  
  Can you provide a citation for your claims about the process of switching?
- Yes, because I need Adobe to do my meh wage part-time job in developing country from my one and only working laptop and I don't have the luxury of surplus money, time, and mental energy to do anything about it.
  But I get your point. If I have the means, I will fix my broken Thinkpad and definitely install Linux there the first chance I get. Either that or Adobe finally release Linux version, which will probably be released after Half-Life 3.
  I can't wait to try Endeavor (so I can finally be an obnoxious person who say "I used Arch^-based ^distro, btw")
  
  Either that or Adobe finally release Linux version, which will probably be released after Half-Life 3.
  Yeah, I've seen what Adobe's support looks like. I remember the Linux version of Flash Player. The guy in charge of it whined on the official Adobe blog on the subject that he had to support "minority browsers" which at the time was everything but Internet Explorer on Windows.
  
  Adobe, you mean photoshop? https://github.com/MisconceivedSec/photoshop-22-linux
  
  That's my point exactly, Linux doesn't come without sacrifice and few are willing to sacrifice anything for freedom
  
  You can run adobe products on Linux with Wine.
- Most people believe they will start seeing problems where there were none before. They need to invest time into research about their use-cases, which is a cost even before switching.
  The typical user used Windows since before they became scared of change, so that's what they'll stick with.
  The pain of using Windows still can and will be higher without the majority of people switching to anything.
- I used to help maintain a Linux distro, and there is a level of polish Windows has that I feel cannot be reached by the FOSS ecosystem due the resources dumped into hiring dedicated teams at MS. Microsoft has tons of money. I'm sad about the direction of windows, but it generally works pretty well for how it's designed (which is in some cases awful).
  
  there was a time where that may have been the case, but microsoft has been chipping away at any polish they had for years. sure there's still some rough edges in linux, but it's only getting better where windows continues to get worse
  
  I’m sad about the direction of windows, but it generally works pretty well for how it’s designed
  That is a bold claim. And absolutely wrong for many configurations.
  
  A good amount of Linux distros don't seem to want to get the basics down. Constant churn vs stable but way out of date is more how is describe the choice, while windows at it's core is actually a pretty stable platform. I don't have to, for example, get annoyed at Firefox middle mouse scroll not working because I forgot this distro still defaults to x11 even though it installs Wayland too blah blah blah.
  
  That's my point, people may complain but nothing else competes.
- I’m not allowed to do my full-time job from any other computer besides the windows one assigned to me.
- Doesn't apply to the author here, so I don't understand why you brought it up?

- did chatgpt wrote that for you
  
  Lol, when I do summaries from now on, I'm going to have to start them with "Blorf blarf, I'm a human" or something. I've been accused of using GPT for things I've written myself. No, no GPT (not now or ever). I just know how to use words when I want to.
  
  very obviously yes. Twice as many bullet points as a human would put in a summary, passive voice, and "the author xxx" are all telltale signs
- The author hopes for a future version of Windows that offers more user control and less interference from Microsoft's software-as-a-service products.
  Currently there is zero incentive for Microsoft to do this, and only upside potential to keep doing what they're doing.
  You'd need thousands of companies to abandon their dependency on Windows, Office, and the entire Microsoft ecosystem for them to change course now.

Microsoft is constantly experimenting with how far they can push users into a corner and get away with it. There might be a day when Microsoft caves and releases a Windows that is more like what we wanted, but I imagine it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. We have not yet seen the worst MS has to ~~offer~~ force upon us.
- There might be a day when Microsoft caves and releases a Windows that is more like what we wanted, but I imagine it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.
  I thought that was going to be with Windows 10's forced updates and telemetry, but people just stopped caring. I'm pretty much assuming that'll be the same for the current batch of nonsense. I can't imagine how bad it would have to get for the general public to say "enough is enough".
  
  Every bullshit move just creates more Linux users.
  Best marketing Linux ever got lol
- Just look at how bad the car industry is now. Your car spies on EVERYTHING.
  Windows can still get a lot worse before we begin to see an improvement.
- That's fine. I'll just stick with Windows 7 for the next 30 years.

It’s so weird to me that Lemmy is full of anti-Windows, anti-Google posts but the comments are always “I’m thinking about switching.”
How about… just do it?
I don’t know what I’m trying to say but being 20 years into “Windows-free” a few years of “Google-free” it’s tiring. I know everyone isn’t me but it’s tough watching this from the other side.
- You know it's not the same person posting every time
  Some people have moved passed thinking about it. Others have just started. Its a growing sentiment and more people are starting to feel it.
- It's not easy committing to the change when you have no knowledge of the platform. The status quo is always easier until it no longer is.
  Having seen how different Linux is from what it was 20 years ago, it's way more approachable than it used to be. Most people could adjust pretty quickly, but with so much of the technical bits hidden from sight, the average PC user these days isn't as tech savvy as they were many years ago, and making the switch can be intimidating.
  
  Good point — I’m pretty far down the rabbit hole. I haven’t really wanted to mess with a non-UNIX/Linux based OS in ages.
  Side note: what OS would that be besides DOS or Windows? Old-school Mac OS comes to mind (System 7) but I like playing with modern platforms more than older ones.
- Linux won't work for my needs. I would switch if it did.
  
  What are your needs, if I may ask?
- I can relate to the anxiety that comes with the thought of switching and finding out you're missing something essential.
  It wasn't a big deal for me since I've used FOSS alternatives for almost everything even on Windows and was hardly gaming anymore when I made the switch (but somewhat ironically I started again on Linux). But that's hardly the position most unhappy Windows users are in.
  
  That’s a good point too.
  I’m primarily a web developer so essentially my entire toolkit is already FOSS and it doesn’t make sense to even run half of it on Windows. Windows is usually the odd one out with weird hacks to make it play nice.
  I use macOS a lot too and because it’s UNIX my Linux toolset is available and ported to the OS with (what I understand to be) minimal changes.
  And I’ve never needed to deploy to some Windows Server either (the thought frightens me).
- Every day, a large number of people start using Linux for the first time. But the internet has a lot of people on it - so you can expect to see "I'm thinking about switching" posts for many years to come. Posts like that won't slow down until Windows is in minority. (And that is unlikely to happen any time in the foreseeable future.)
- I gave Linux a try 2 or 3 times back when I was in school. It was a horrible user experience and games wouldn't work back then.
  Now that games on Linux are a thing, I would love to give it a try once more. But now I have a full-time office job and a family. When I'm off work, I just want to fire up the PC and have everything work, which it does with windows. I also have the Pro version of Windows 11 and don't experience all of the ad horror that everyone here is talking about.
  If I gain back the free time and mental capacity, I'll give it a try.
  
  It's not like it's difficult to switch these days. Try something like Bazzite or Nobara and gaming should work out of the box.
- Only computer I have Windows on is my laptop and that's only because it's fairly new and laptops are notorious for proprietary hardware that's hard to get decent drivers for. My desktop has had Linux for a couple of years and everything else runs Linux.
  
  If you've got an external USB drive bigger than the laptop's, and are willing to take the time, you could back it up by making a disk image with Clonezilla so you're sure you have a backout option if you run into too much trouble getting Linux working
- Getting rid of Google would require switching phone for me as there isn't a google free ROM for the Redmi K50 Pro.
  
  GrapheneOS for the Google Pixel. I'm using a Google Pixel 4 which was like $120 and super easy to flash. I'm from the US, so I understand if things might be different where you are.
- Give it a couple weeks and maybe by then I'll hopefully have upgraded from win10 on my desktop to either Spiral or Netrunner. Only thing holding me back from upgrading on my desktop right now is how much stuff I have to save to my new external drive and how it feels like a Herculean task.
- Poor you
- I'm using Linux on servers and for self hosting, but Linux on a desktop is a sick joke.
  
  Linux on desktop is amazing. My experience has been absolutely flawless.

I switched all of my Windows systems over to Windows 10 LTSC a few months ago, and it's been a game-changer. I still get security updates, but no advertisements, bloat, or new "features." I believe it's supported until 2032.
After that, I'll probably switch my remaining systems over to Linux, but until then, it's not half bad.
- I ran ltsc for a few months... Then I found it didn't have simple stuff like the camera app? I forget why, but there was one all I really needed that I didn't have, so after fighting trying to install it, I just want back to Windows pro. I might give windows enterprise a try though.
  
  VLC, Open Capture Device would probably have worked. Or OBS if you wanted to get fancy.
- I'm thinking about doing it too but with w11
  
  I haven't tried W11 LTSC. Even if you cut out the bloat, I just can't stand the interface. Hopefully 12 is better, but I'm not hopeful.

Acceptance is the last stage of grief. You are ready to move on.
- It's like when people in abusive relationships suddenly realize that their partner doesn't actually care about them, and everyone around them is like "Yeah, no shit. Fucking leave their ass."

Thanks in party to the spirit in Lemmy (thanks guys and gals) and getting pissed off at the ever more enshittification, I really went full-on on taking back control, and I don't mean just changing my home PC (mainly used for Gaming) from Windows to Linux, but also replacing the TV Box that's bundled with my ISP subscription (and will be changing ISP when the current contract is over) with my own Mini-PC with Lubunto and Kodi (which is also my Torrenting host with an always-on VPN and my home's NAS) replacing the original Samsung Android (which had been bloated due to updates to the point of filling up all memory) of my aging tablet, with LineageOS and even doing the same on my brand new Smartphone.
Granted, I've always had the spirit of avoiding "smarts" in stuff that doesn't need it - like TVs - but now I went and as much as possible took back control on even the stuff that does need "smarts".
So far I'm quite happy with it all: I've maintained (improved, even, such as my Tablet now having more available memory) my level of Tech access whilst cutting of the ways in which companies exploited my time and patience for advertising money - I definitely feel I'm better now than before: a lot of things became more convenient and less restricted than they were before.
Things are becoming really bad out there when it comes to treating customers as cattle to be milked and I reckon that the only future were Tech is actually a pleasure to use for users is for those people who take control back from the corps on all of their devices.
- Since that machine is mostly for gaming, I went with Pop OS!
- doing the same on my brand new Smartphone
  Watch out, rooting a phone may have unexpected consequences, like losing LTE on Samsungs or losing access to banking apps.
  
  You don't lose banking apps, banks lose you
  
  I'd like to leave a warning for anyone working with Uber or Lyft as well, a friend of mine flashed his phone with a custom ROM and couldn't work for a week until I managed to reflash the original ROM on it.
  It took a while cause his phone was from a not so well known brand and it took a lot of hours on russian forums to find the stock ROM.
  
  Banks are a bunch of dicks anyway. I recently received a ToS that forced me to have all my OSs on their latest update, and never install anything that doesn't come from official stores.
  Next day all of my money was in another bank.
  
  Well, that phone is a Xiaomi, not a Samsung (who had already made my shit list some years ago thanks to all their bloat), and the new ROM is just a bloat free MIUI, so from the same maker as the phone.
  And yeah, as somebody else mentioned, if the banking app stopped working it would be the bank losing me - it wouldn't be the first time I changed banks because they pissed me off.
  Retail banking as a service is a commodity - they're pretty much all the same - so sticking or not with a bank should be something one does based on cost and convenience and a banking app that doesn't work on my phone reduces convenience.
  As it so happens my banking app works fine.
  That said, your alert can be important for other people and points one more reason to avoid Samsung like the plague.

In Linux I wanted a window to open in a specific place on boot. Fairly simple bash script.
In Windows FUCK YOU.
With llm's you can get a lot of bad info but for Linux commands, basic tutorials and scripting Linux is WAY easier to learn nowadays.
Edit didn't mean to imply Linux is easier than Windows to learn in general.
- Registry keys are inferior but they do exist. The last time I used Windows I just had to set some magic reg keys and it was easy to make that happen.
  
  I always found that deeply problematic. Here is some obscure path to follow to set some obscure value where half of the naming does not indicate what exactly you are doing there. Also if you don't set the data-type exactly it wont work. For a fucking 0 or 1 off/on value flag.
- on my i3wm workstation it's literally a one liner in my config file, which is comprehensive across all of i3wm. Ignoring external scripts.
- Edit didn’t mean to imply Linux is easier than Windows to learn in general.
  It is though. People just neglect that in today's world, no one "learns" Windows from scratch.
  Learning to do anything from scratch is easier on most Linux distros than on Windows. The tools are better and the documentation is light years ahead. Windows is a steaming pile of horseshit in comparison. But once you've made yourself a cozy nest in the middle of said pile, getting to the comfy whirlpool hot tub that is linux requires you to scale over the walls of horseshit surrounding your nest. And that is what makes people claim "but Linux hard, muh duh!"
- Would you mind sharing that script? That sounds incredibly useful lol. I'm new-ish to linux as my daily driver and love customizing it!
  
  of course sorry for delay.
  Requirements: wmctrl, xdotool
  My left screen is 1440p, second screen to the right is 1080 in portrait so you will have to swap the horz/vert locations to match your layout.
  
  #!/bin/bash # Time in seconds to wait after launch of program and manipulation of window timer=5 # Launch FreeCAD maximized on the main screen freecad & sleep $timer # Wait for FreeCAD to launch wmctrl -r "FreeCAD" -b add,maximized_vert,maximized_horz # Launch Cura on the second screen, top half cura & sleep $timer # Wait for Cura to launch xdotool search --onlyvisible --name "Ultimaker Cura" windowsize 540 960 windowmove 2560 0 # Launch Firefox on the second screen, bottom half firefox & sleep $timer # Wait for Firefox to launch xdotool search --onlyvisible --name "Mozilla Firefox" windowsize 540 960 windowmove 2560 960 echo "Applications have been launched and positioned."
- What's the use case?
  
  Just setup for various hobbies.
  For example Launch freecad on my main screen, cura & firefox etc in their preset positions and windowed sizes on the second screen.
- In atleast 3 distros I wanted to add program at start-up, easy peasy on windows , Linux is mess , some has gui for that but these three distorsion HAD ZERO option for it and I still don't know how to do it.
  In windows i want to serch for here is program installed, so easy to know and find . In Linux I had to fight multiple terminal commands ( in 2024 no less) and ev n then indid not come across whwre is the program installed
  In Linux I plugged in hdd and wanted a program to acess its content, turns out I can't do that without mumbo jumbo or wv n with it Whwre as in windows , inplug it and VOILA! I can access it across anything.
  Linux MAY be good at something , but it still sucks for real Common usage.
  
  Which distros? Just saying Linux is kind of pointless. Linux is the kernel.
  Some distros come with more pre-installed features and functions, some come with less.
  Some are more average user-friendly than others.
  I put Debian on my laptop and have not had any problems accessing external drives or plugging in multiple monitors.
  
  I had none of these issues and i don't know what you are talking about.
  If you install programs through your package manager they come with a start-menu entry just as easily findable as in Windows. If you don't install programs with an installer in Windows you get the same problem.
  Also mounting HDDs made its content accessible to all my programs so far, without any issue. I think you must have chosen extremely obscure distros or fucked things up by yourself during install processes.
  
  No disrepect intended, but you do seem exceptionally tech challenged

Ask your doctor if Linux is right for you
- He prescribed me a medication but when I went to get it from the pharmacy they just gave me a bunch of precursor chemicals which are just toxic if not combined in the right way. When I asked for help the pharmacist just said "RTFM"
  Also, what is a comorbidity?
  
  I'm struggling to transition still, honestly... Windows visualised as a street gives me access to all the shops and window browsing I need, everyone wants to be there and get my attention, and despite the masses of intrusive advertising and shady people around every corner watching me, I don't have to actively navigate the street itself very much. It's a dystopian street of neon distractions and side hustles but you can mostly shut it out and walk.
  Linux as a street is a lot barer, the street is cleaner and less intrusive, I'm not being watched from the alleyways... but there are knee high walls every few meters, there are open manhole covers here and there, and I have to actively persuade some shops to let me in or even open.
  I don't walk down a paved street for the joy of navigating an assault course, I walk down it to get places with the least amount of friction possible and I just can't seem to get that from Linux yet. Then again Windows would like to start stopping me every few meters and asking intrusive questions or hocking me tat, so my move is inevitable.

It isn't your computer, user license clearly states you're renting the software. You always have been, it's just now they can enforce that agreement more readily. Microsoft is making a lot of bad decisions at the moment, but the majority of consumers really don't care - adverts and surveillance are what they grew up with.
You can switch to Linux, but as much as I love it (it's my daily driver for work and for travel gaming, oh and the community is absolutely amazing), it's not 1-1. You will have to jump through hoops sometimes to get things to run (but damn me there are amazing people out there who can and do help). Then again, you own it because it is free, and it will run most things with the right tweaks.
I can't speak for MACs (too poor to use one, my devices tend to be upgradable or VERY long life), but I hear they're a better experience in terms of less bloat/adverts. Again though, you are renting with Apple, and are largely trapped in their ecosystem, and they have a 'reputation' for lack of repairability....
- It isn’t your computer, user license clearly states you’re renting the software
  It IS your computer, it's just not your software.
  
  Whoa whoa whoa an operating system is not software depending who you ask lol. It's the program that manages both your PC's hardware and software resources. /s
- When I switched to Linux (year 2011), jumping through hoops reduced significantly, because:
  running games on builtin Intel cards etc, that is, kinda second-class citizen hardware, was anyways PITA ;
  it made my stuff run terribly faster ;
  those hoops are not too different in complexity from installing mods for games under Windows ;
  for trying to learn programming Linux is much less problematic (have ADHD, so didn't learn much back then, but) ;
  the main issue of uninstalling McAffee went away for free ;
  I was at school, so didn't have any problems with office suites' incompatibilities and such ;
  and also Linux in 2011 was in general easier, don't believe RedHat fanboys and such, it was very nice before PulseAudio, systemd and widespread adoption of GTK3, say, to change colors you just needed a 20-line .gtkrc-2.0 and .Xresources, and your WM's config file, it's 20 minutes from fresh install to feel normal ;
  the community was friendlier, somehow back then RTFM was considered acceptable, but people rarely used it, now everybody behaves as if RTFM was very bad, but also too many people use it, sometimes to avoid admitting that they are wrong and a certain thing is absent in TFM.
- I've been a macOS user for over a decade and I am never going back to Windows. That being said, Apple does have iCloud (their version of OneDrive) which is tightly integrated into the OS and they're not shy about asking you to pay for more storage. They also want you to log in with an Apple ID when you first start your computer and I don't know how easy it is to use a local account.
  It's not the same as Windows in terms of aggressive ads and upsells, but Apple aren't innocent in wanting more of your money. If you want true freedom you have to pay with your time and energy and run Linux.
- It's not that people ignore it, it's just that they don't really have an alternative. You can rent from Microsoft or Apple, or go the Linux way where you don't have the proper UX an average user needs and is accustomed to with Windows or macOS.

That's because you're the victim of a crime: extortion

Like, I'd understand a free version of Windows that has the ads and bloat, but the idea that people are paying $100 for this disrespect is insane.

I have nothing critical on it, and I will make my 8.1 last as long as the disks and fans still spin!
- I wonder how many years until all mainstream websites and web based apps like steam refuse to work because you're os isn't supported by the latest browser version.
  
  As soon as they bake drm checks into the os

Using windows will do that.

Linux never looked so hot.

LIBREBOOT! LIBREBOOT! LIBREBOOT!

It never was yours
- It started when they changed My Computer to This Computer.

That makes the OP eligible for Windows-refugee status tbh.

lol "anymore"

Oops

What do Microsoft have to gain from not listening on to the users?

How intuitive

The "1000 and 1 Microsoft sucker lament" genre again.
One would think in a "technology" community people would be sharing mostly articles about some cool-working things, and news would be something supplementary.
I know that I haven't submitted a single post here, but just WTF.
- Maybe if Microsoft(/Facebook/Elon) stopped doing actively fucking evil shit every opportunity they got it wouldn't dominate the discussion?
- Dude......I've been here since may, and submitted about a dozen posts. Not tech related, but, still. Lemmy gotta grow and get interaction!
  Go make a post in your favorite sub right now.