Nah, 98% of my tweaking is because I have a laptop as a daily driver. The last 2% is trying to get pipewire to ignore my headset mic in favour of the built-in mic and breaking things in the process, but I couldn't even get windows to actually use my headphones for years.

I constantly wanted to fiddle with windows, but couldn't, and then had unrelated things just decide to break. And this was in the 7 days. Everything after that has actively hated me.

Are you crazy? Stick to some stable or semi stable distro with a mainstream DE and you don't have to deal with any of those. 🤦‍♂️

People keep saying this, but windows and macos are not user friendly. Theyre user hostile. "No, you cant do that unless you perform a ritual." "Want to download something? Spend 4 hours typing random terminal commands to maybe get a package manager thats out of date 9/10 times or good luck googling." "Want to change where your taskbar is? Too bad." "Want to do literally anything? Every setting is a coinflip between vibecoded settings app, windows 7 legacy menus, or windows xp legacy menus. The latter two work better (and the former is just the latter obfuscated) but are hidden in secret menus. Good luck!"

My 80 year old grandma has no issues at all with her CachyOS/kde/Limine installation, but i used to get calls every other weekend for her windows 11 laptop.

Also, if i need to do anything, i can just ssh into her computer without issue. Ill admit that quick assist is way better here, but the point is that i get significantly less calls because KDE is just intuitive.

I think the general consensus is that windows XP was the last clean and well put together microsoft os that's the rounded cleaner version of windows 2000.

When windows 7 came out I downgraded back to XP, which with the new file system it's nearly impossible to pull off. I can't downgrade anything windows 10 and above and I'd have windows xp partitioned if I could.

Not really, but I haven’t used Microsoft in years.

There’s a list but the main themes are the overall degradation in performance when they “upgraded” my PC from 10 to 11 and just how sloppy and half assed it seems to be. The obfuscated settings, the way it constantly seems to be putting itself in the way of whatever I’m trying to do, the spike of anger I get every time I open the start menu… Basically the overall experience just got worse by just about every measure.

I upgraded from 10 to 11 about 5 years ago, and there definitely is a learning curve. I would never go back to Windows 10. My experience was different, even PC's that didn't meet the 11 requirements ran better. I generally put my most used apps on the taskbar, and end up just searching for lesser used apps in the start menu. Not sure what you mean by 'putting itself in the way'. Do you have an example of this?

The easiest example that comes to mind without having it in front of me is the giant "recommended" section when you open the start menu or file explorer. It's just bullshit I have to scroll past every time. It wouldn't be as bad but someone decided having a indecipherable picture of whatever is in the document or a big word icon was somehow useful. And it shouldn't be in the start menu at all, who's opening documents from their start menu? The fact that these things made it to prod without someone testing it and being like "wait a minute, this sucks actually" is infuriating to me. They're a billion dollar corporation, they can easily afford to test shit. Just about everything they turn out should be gold. The fact that they don't is just rubbing their disdain for their users in our faces.

The constant shoving OneDrive in my face is another issue. I don't use it, I don't need it, I have a backup of my data, I'm not going to set this up, I don't need to be reminded in three weeks, just fuck off.

It’s all good

That is true, but it is also a setting easily changed with a one time update. I have zero problem with options. I don't like the recommended section, but maybe some folks do. Same as Onedrive. Just google 'how to use Windows without Onedrive' and you'll have it gone in a minute or two.

https://www.geeksinphoenix.com/blog/post/2024/04/01/what-you-can-do-if-you-do-not-want-to-use-onedrive

Annoyingly, as of a couple of months ago I now have to use Win11 at work, and it really is fucking horrible compared to every other machine I use. And the version I'm using is corporate as fuck, so has very little of the bloatier shit.

It's just so sluggish on the low spec hardware I have to use (a Dell desktop with 8gb RAM and an i3). I have Debian running on an older machine with the same specs which is SO MUCH faster in every way.

I used Macs for 20 years, so like to be able to click the mouse wheel to expose all windows. It's a fiddle to set up in Linux, but works well once it's set up. It's also a fiddle to set up in Win11, but it also feels like it's going to crash the machine every time I use it.

Similarly, I'm used to tapping the Win key, then immediately typing in the menu for the app I want. Every time I do it in Windows I end up dismissing the Start menu because I've begun typing too soon. Every. Time. I want to put the fucking thing through the window.

OH, and because it's a bloated mess that can't run on 8gb of RAM, it's taken up 22gb of the 250gb SSD as a sysfile.

I fucking hate Windows.

I boot my work PC when I get in, then go off to make a coffee. It boots to log in reasonably well, but then takes a good five minutes to run the start up script that connects it to the company's shared drives.

When I could use Linux at work the machine mounted the drives at boot so they were available immediately. I've gone backwards despite being 'upgraded'.

Moving to gmail, not from it?

Google isn't exactly your friend and will not get better.

Debian 43?

Then, tell me, how is the future? :D

I'm still on Debian 14 (wip/testing), to be released in more than a year.

Skill issue.

Exactly. Navigating Windows is a skill. Navigating linux is a skill. Navigating Macos is a skill. This argument that linux in its current state is user unfriendly ignores that all operating systems are unfriendly, and my argument is that linux tends to be more intuitive because of learned mistakes from Windows and Macos.

Your right, but it’s for my business and my understanding is that other email providers may have their emails marked as spam even when it’s just confirmation email, receipt, or appointment reminders.

I don’t want to risk having mail not delivered and having it translate to a lost sale or a poor customer experience.

You could still go to a professional email hoster, no need to do it all yourself.

Google mostly blocks email without SPF and they have a couple more rules, but they document those on their website.

Its been a looong time but our time is finally here.

I can feel a change in the wind right now

I can touch the sky.

And they're not gonna hold me down no more

No they're not gonna change my mind...

Because I've got faith of the heart!

☝️🤝