5 ms·

I ran Linux for many years. But I needed to run some software that only supported windows and mac, and wine didn't cut it, so I had to reinstall windows. I can

I ran Linux for many years. But I needed to run some software that only supported windows and mac, and wine didn't cut it, so I had to reinstall windows. I can't tolerate windows. I put up with 10 for a while then went back to 7. 7 was good. Then some stuff wasn't supported so I moved to 11. Couldn't do it. I'd get random garbage like a notification for some "grand prize giveaway". I legit thought I'd gotten adware installed somehow. Nope, official Microsoft notification! Want to configure the system at all? Keep defender from trashing your CPU for fifteen minutes after you compile something? Stop auto-restarts that close everything? Use actual sleep not the weird "connected sleep" nonsense? Tough, you don't get to. If you do it anyway it will revert after your next update (mandatory btw!) or sometimes just at random. I can't remember a version since 7 that doesn't make me feel like I'm in a bazaar being accosted by freaking rug merchants. I used to hate macs. I switched to a macbook. I am much happier now despite the occasional annoyances.

fakedang 1y ago
The Windows 11 home version has all the adware garbage. The Pro version is cleaner.
WD-42 1y ago
Same experience, but from using 11 in a VM. Installing it is eye opening, with all the unskippable Eulas that force you to agree to share your data. I’m convinced it’s a frog in boiling water situation for people still using windows. It’s so bad.
- nine_k 1y ago
  Hear me out: MS Excel. The one true powerful version only exists on Windows. Another anchor: ODBC drivers. Some good SQL Server connectivity options are only available on Windows. When your captive audience is accountants, traders, and CFOs, it's quite a moat.
  - larrik 1y ago
    And then, somehow, the desktop Outlook is better on mac than on Windows. On Windows I can't even easily copy/paste from one email to another. It strips out half the formatting and any colors that were there. Nor can I copy email recipients from an email into a new one. I tried switching to Windows last year and I just couldn't do it. So now my expensive and fancy powerful laptop collects dust and I'm back to my 5 year old m1 (which is somehow faster, usually).
  - wintermutestwin 1y ago
    Windows Excel in Parallels on Mac is the best option I have found.
  - JeanMarcS 1y ago
    You mean the software that can't open 2 differents files if they have the same name ?
frollogaston 1y ago
I switched my spare PC from Linux back to Win10, and it's way less annoying than I remember (rug bazaar was right). Maybe because it's not getting constant updates anymore.
MarkusWandel 1y ago
Just a data point on the "modern suspend" feature. I have a Win11/Fedora dual boot laptop. Fedora doesn't do modern suspend, at least on that machine. Found that deep, deep down in the "BIOS" (yes, I know, UEFI) menus - so deep that you have to do a secret keyboard dance to even get that menu - is a "enable S3 sleep" option. Figured OK, I'll just get good suspend in Linux and whatever in Windows. Surprise! Windows 11 likes S3 suspend just fine. Push the button, instant screen off and winking power light... push it again, instant wakeup. So if by some miracle your hardware/UEFI still supports it, you're good. This is a 5-year-old-ish Acer Swift 3 for what it's worth. Oh, wait, you mean Windows update toggles that setting back? Whoa.
ant6n 1y ago
The forced reinstalls for updates is the worst. Sometimes when working on some Excel file etc at night, I went away without saving (e.g. crying kid needs attention, and I never returned). Auto-saving only works when you store files in OneDrive. So then windows Update will shut down Excel, and Excel often won't create an AutoSave, and then hours of work are lost -- totally intentionally, deliberately, all using Microsoft products that are apparently specifically designed to make you lose hours of work. Who designs these antipatterns!?
- WD-42 1y ago
  The forced restarts are mind boggling. What is an operating system? At it's core, an OS is a program to run other programs. Yet this Windows program likes to randomly kill all the programs it's supposed to keep running, at night, when it thinks you aren't looking. It literally fails at the most basic purpose of an operating system.
  - Rohansi 1y ago
    If they didn't force restart then the patches they release for vulnerabilities would never take effect. What normal user restarts their PC other than when they're having issues?
    - mapontosevenths 1y ago
      Maybe they could stop building the OS in such a way that it requires reboots? You know that other operating systems can manage without that, right?
      - thewebguyd 1y ago
        > You know that other operating systems can manage without that, right? Not for kernel updates (Linux, by default), and not for macOS which is now RO root fs and also requires a reboot because updates are image based, a. la. Fedora Silverblue. Also FWIW, Windows now has hotpatching, albeit not available to consumers, it's attached to enterprise licensing
christkv 1y ago
I had to do the same and ran it in a vm on linux.
fifticon 1y ago
my favprite notfavorite win11 feature is that they broke keyboard layout switching, permanently. It has been reported as an unsolved bug for nearly two years now :-/. in 25+ years, I had been taking it for granted to work correctly. Apparently nobody in Redmond uses the feature.. I am european, and (try to) use it minutes apart. As an extra bonus, MS Teams regularly either ignores keyboard switch, or switches 50% broken, half the keys. But what can you expect, from an app which is a selfupdating web server that installs itself with squirrel :-/
wobfan 1y ago
I don't want to motivate anyone to switch back to Windows (because Microsoft), but for anyone who doesn't want to or can't switch, but also doesn't want to endure Microsoft's chosen way of entirely ignoring user needs but instead focusing on squeezing money out of them through ads and the collection of user data in Windows 10 and 11, check out the Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC version! It's still supported 'til 2031 iirc. Plus, as it's meant to Enterprises and IoT systems, it's stripped from all the ads, bloatware, and what not. When I installed it first one year ago, I was just sad that I didn't know it earlier. It's everything I ever wanted Windows to be: lean, fast, and (somewhat) minimalistic, at least compared to stock Windows 10. Can't 100% say whether Windows 11 IoT LTSC is equally good, but from what I've read it also is worth considering.
- happymellon 1y ago
  The fact that this is even brought up as a solution really speaks to how bad Windows is. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-11-iot-enterprise-ltsc https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-... > after you install Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC Evaluation, you won't be able to use the recovery partition on your PC to go back to your previous version of Windows. Yikes.
  - e4m2 1y ago
    You're "supposed" to acquire LTSC through non-official means, not using the evaluation ISO.
    - happymellon 1y ago
      So the only way to use Windows, is to use a version that's designed for IoT, and only available through enterprise channels? It's really selling itself...
  - privatelypublic 1y ago
    That's routine. Windows generally ends up nuking the OEM partitions if you do golden installs.
bikelang 1y ago
There are debloat scripts for Win11 that are pretty effective. I use this one: https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat Only issue is that Windows will periodically re-bloat itself - so you have to re-run it after more or less every quarterly windows update. The only thing remaining that I want to remove but cannot get rid of is edge. Removing edge is only available in the EU for $ome in$ane rea$on. You might be able to get an EU ISO for installation? Unclear to me but I haven’t dug too deeply.
- BuyMyBitcoins 1y ago
  I was willing to give Edge a chance years ago. I didn’t see a compelling enough reason to switch, so I stuck with Firefox. However, while troubleshooting some problems on a family member’s PC I got to see what a ‘default’/‘opt in to everything’ Edge experience is like in 2025. It’s horrifying. Edge is jam-packed with bloat and the entire browser is geared towards monitoring and hoarding every scrap of user interaction that passes through it. The worst part is that the average person likely has no idea just how pervasive Microsoft’s spying and ad-targeting is. I envy the fact that EU Citizens have the right to decline all of these intrusive “features” foisted upon them by Microsoft. I doubt Congress would ever come close to affording us a fraction of these same consumer rights. Sigh.
- hyperman1 1y ago
  Imagine any other thing treating you like this. Once a week, your IKEA cupboard locks itself and repairs some factory defects. You want something? Tough. Once every half an hour, it opens a random hatch and drops a ton of paper on the floor, full of IKEA ads. It has all kinds of cameras to see if it can sell you other IKEA stuff, but pinky promise, they don't sell images to others, except 700 partners. And every company in the world is petrified of fear about using other cupboards. But good news, here is some stuff a friend of a friend gave you, that stops all this. Mostly. For a month.
xela79 1y ago
> I'd get random garbage like a notification for some "grand prize giveaway" ??? how? what kind of malware did you install? have several W11 boxes, none exhibit this behavior. No "official" notification for a prize give away or any ads.
- GreenVulpine 1y ago
  The malware is Windows 11 itself. It's an official Microsoft thing https://rewards.bing.com/sweepstakes/million/about https://rewards.bing.com/sweepstakes/million/about You might not have seen it if the giveaway is not available in your region or if you are using an Enterprise/debloated version.
  - xela79 1y ago
    > The Microsoft Rewards Ultimate Giveaway Sweepstakes isn’t available in your country or region. ah, cool a region that blocks these business practices... awesome :)

fakedang 1y ago

The Windows 11 home version has all the adware garbage. The Pro version is cleaner.

WD-42 1y ago

Same experience, but from using 11 in a VM. Installing it is eye opening, with all the unskippable Eulas that force you to agree to share your data. I’m convinced it’s a frog in boiling water situation for people still using windows. It’s so bad.

nine_k 1y ago
Hear me out: MS Excel. The one true powerful version only exists on Windows. Another anchor: ODBC drivers. Some good SQL Server connectivity options are only available on Windows. When your captive audience is accountants, traders, and CFOs, it's quite a moat.
- larrik 1y ago
  And then, somehow, the desktop Outlook is better on mac than on Windows. On Windows I can't even easily copy/paste from one email to another. It strips out half the formatting and any colors that were there. Nor can I copy email recipients from an email into a new one. I tried switching to Windows last year and I just couldn't do it. So now my expensive and fancy powerful laptop collects dust and I'm back to my 5 year old m1 (which is somehow faster, usually).
- wintermutestwin 1y ago
  Windows Excel in Parallels on Mac is the best option I have found.
- JeanMarcS 1y ago
  You mean the software that can't open 2 differents files if they have the same name ?

frollogaston 1y ago

I switched my spare PC from Linux back to Win10, and it's way less annoying than I remember (rug bazaar was right). Maybe because it's not getting constant updates anymore.

MarkusWandel 1y ago

Just a data point on the "modern suspend" feature. I have a Win11/Fedora dual boot laptop. Fedora doesn't do modern suspend, at least on that machine. Found that deep, deep down in the "BIOS" (yes, I know, UEFI) menus - so deep that you have to do a secret keyboard dance to even get that menu - is a "enable S3 sleep" option. Figured OK, I'll just get good suspend in Linux and whatever in Windows. Surprise! Windows 11 likes S3 suspend just fine. Push the button, instant screen off and winking power light... push it again, instant wakeup. So if by some miracle your hardware/UEFI still supports it, you're good. This is a 5-year-old-ish Acer Swift 3 for what it's worth. Oh, wait, you mean Windows update toggles that setting back? Whoa.

ant6n 1y ago

The forced reinstalls for updates is the worst. Sometimes when working on some Excel file etc at night, I went away without saving (e.g. crying kid needs attention, and I never returned). Auto-saving only works when you store files in OneDrive. So then windows Update will shut down Excel, and Excel often won't create an AutoSave, and then hours of work are lost -- totally intentionally, deliberately, all using Microsoft products that are apparently specifically designed to make you lose hours of work. Who designs these antipatterns!?

WD-42 1y ago
The forced restarts are mind boggling. What is an operating system? At it's core, an OS is a program to run other programs. Yet this Windows program likes to randomly kill all the programs it's supposed to keep running, at night, when it thinks you aren't looking. It literally fails at the most basic purpose of an operating system.
- Rohansi 1y ago
  If they didn't force restart then the patches they release for vulnerabilities would never take effect. What normal user restarts their PC other than when they're having issues?
  - mapontosevenths 1y ago
    Maybe they could stop building the OS in such a way that it requires reboots? You know that other operating systems can manage without that, right?
    - thewebguyd 1y ago
      > You know that other operating systems can manage without that, right? Not for kernel updates (Linux, by default), and not for macOS which is now RO root fs and also requires a reboot because updates are image based, a. la. Fedora Silverblue. Also FWIW, Windows now has hotpatching, albeit not available to consumers, it's attached to enterprise licensing

christkv 1y ago

I had to do the same and ran it in a vm on linux.

fifticon 1y ago

my favprite notfavorite win11 feature is that they broke keyboard layout switching, permanently. It has been reported as an unsolved bug for nearly two years now :-/. in 25+ years, I had been taking it for granted to work correctly. Apparently nobody in Redmond uses the feature.. I am european, and (try to) use it minutes apart. As an extra bonus, MS Teams regularly either ignores keyboard switch, or switches 50% broken, half the keys. But what can you expect, from an app which is a selfupdating web server that installs itself with squirrel :-/

wobfan 1y ago

I don't want to motivate anyone to switch back to Windows (because Microsoft), but for anyone who doesn't want to or can't switch, but also doesn't want to endure Microsoft's chosen way of entirely ignoring user needs but instead focusing on squeezing money out of them through ads and the collection of user data in Windows 10 and 11, check out the Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC version! It's still supported 'til 2031 iirc. Plus, as it's meant to Enterprises and IoT systems, it's stripped from all the ads, bloatware, and what not. When I installed it first one year ago, I was just sad that I didn't know it earlier. It's everything I ever wanted Windows to be: lean, fast, and (somewhat) minimalistic, at least compared to stock Windows 10. Can't 100% say whether Windows 11 IoT LTSC is equally good, but from what I've read it also is worth considering.

happymellon 1y ago
The fact that this is even brought up as a solution really speaks to how bad Windows is. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-11-iot-enterprise-ltsc https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-... > after you install Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC Evaluation, you won't be able to use the recovery partition on your PC to go back to your previous version of Windows. Yikes.
- e4m2 1y ago
  You're "supposed" to acquire LTSC through non-official means, not using the evaluation ISO.
  - happymellon 1y ago
    So the only way to use Windows, is to use a version that's designed for IoT, and only available through enterprise channels? It's really selling itself...
- privatelypublic 1y ago
  That's routine. Windows generally ends up nuking the OEM partitions if you do golden installs.

bikelang 1y ago

There are debloat scripts for Win11 that are pretty effective. I use this one: https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat Only issue is that Windows will periodically re-bloat itself - so you have to re-run it after more or less every quarterly windows update. The only thing remaining that I want to remove but cannot get rid of is edge. Removing edge is only available in the EU for $ome in$ane rea$on. You might be able to get an EU ISO for installation? Unclear to me but I haven’t dug too deeply.

BuyMyBitcoins 1y ago
I was willing to give Edge a chance years ago. I didn’t see a compelling enough reason to switch, so I stuck with Firefox. However, while troubleshooting some problems on a family member’s PC I got to see what a ‘default’/‘opt in to everything’ Edge experience is like in 2025. It’s horrifying. Edge is jam-packed with bloat and the entire browser is geared towards monitoring and hoarding every scrap of user interaction that passes through it. The worst part is that the average person likely has no idea just how pervasive Microsoft’s spying and ad-targeting is. I envy the fact that EU Citizens have the right to decline all of these intrusive “features” foisted upon them by Microsoft. I doubt Congress would ever come close to affording us a fraction of these same consumer rights. Sigh.
hyperman1 1y ago
Imagine any other thing treating you like this. Once a week, your IKEA cupboard locks itself and repairs some factory defects. You want something? Tough. Once every half an hour, it opens a random hatch and drops a ton of paper on the floor, full of IKEA ads. It has all kinds of cameras to see if it can sell you other IKEA stuff, but pinky promise, they don't sell images to others, except 700 partners. And every company in the world is petrified of fear about using other cupboards. But good news, here is some stuff a friend of a friend gave you, that stops all this. Mostly. For a month.

xela79 1y ago

> I'd get random garbage like a notification for some "grand prize giveaway" ??? how? what kind of malware did you install? have several W11 boxes, none exhibit this behavior. No "official" notification for a prize give away or any ads.

GreenVulpine 1y ago
The malware is Windows 11 itself. It's an official Microsoft thing https://rewards.bing.com/sweepstakes/million/about https://rewards.bing.com/sweepstakes/million/about You might not have seen it if the giveaway is not available in your region or if you are using an Enterprise/debloated version.
- xela79 1y ago
  > The Microsoft Rewards Ultimate Giveaway Sweepstakes isn’t available in your country or region. ah, cool a region that blocks these business practices... awesome :)