I ditched Windows in 2022. I'm not going back to Windows unless Microsoft makes an OS for professionals that is stripped down out of the box to show how serious they are. No ads of any kind, no garbage online account features, nothing, just core offline-ready Windows. I bet it would perform drastically better too.
Same (2024), but i wouldn't come back in a hurry if they did so. Basically everything works now in Linux world, including my obscure devices, music & video editing, and my whole steam library... with better performance. It's sort of insane.
I just installed Bazzite-DX, and have been really surprised with how easy it was to install, and how well everything "just works". It even tells me when my wireless keyboard batteries are running out, something Windows couldn't do without running proprietary Logitech software.
Yup, Windows 10 LTSC here. It's a lot faster and smoother, but I'm already transitioning to Linux on my other boxes. Will probably move before LTSC runs out as well.
edit: I realised I overplayed how much faster and smoother it is. compared to standard win 10 or 11. Example being my login screen sometimes struggles to come up when the computer is locked (work around double mash CTRL-ALT-DEL)
I have a Surface Book 2 which was insanely fast when I bought it. Its pretty vanilla, I dont like to tweak Windows often it usually feels like it degrades, its been sluggish the last two years or so. Idk what Microsoft did but used to be vanilla Windows was performant enough, they must have fired their performance guys? Idk
Yeah, their performance has gone in the toilet. Recently we needed an old system setup just for group meetings in the office. I installed 11 on it - it struggled, gave up, threw a linux install on for giggles and it's buttery smooth.
Every single time it updates, which it forces on me I come back to add to buy Office 365 even if I already have it. On one computer the File Manager is slowed to a crawl, the image viewer slows to a crawl if I hit left or right arrow keys. The built-in antivirus has a feature to send “suspicious” files to Microsoft, with zero audit trail of what it sends over, and its on by default.
The various UI inconsistencies, theres weird XP goop mixed with the modern UI.
I tried to make a new user account one time and it told me I couldnt because I needed to use another feature within Windows to do so, when I went to do so it told me I needed to either use the same feature that led me there (if I remember correctly). It was ridiculous.
Hot, garbage since 2022.
Not to mention all the absurd telemetry. Everything you type into the start menu goes into a Microsoft backend. Everything, every time. Idk how people can have so much of their data constantly going to a Microsoft backend without being upset. Goes back all the way to Windows 8 or 10 btw.
