Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11 • Hacker News Board

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#21

Post by jasode » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

bigyabai wrote: post #2

> However, there are some programs I use daily (like Scrivener) and are essential to me 2026, the killer app for many Windows users is now a text editor that has ran in Wine since 2012. We're making good progress, folks!

>2026, the killer app for many Windows users is now a text editor that has ran in Wine since 2012.

Your comment is a little confusing since the author already mentioned Wine with the following sentence that's after the one you quoted: >"Using Wine is an option... well. Buggy option."

Were you trying to disagree with the author and say it's not actually buggy?

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#22

Post by edferda » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

svrtknst wrote: post #8

I'm not being factious, but is there any Linux distro with a desktop experience that matches Windows and macos? Like, yes, I know there are many flaws with both. A lot of sound, technical issues with windows and macos. A slew of UX ones as well. But despite W11 carrying around remnants of Windows 98 still, both of those OSes _feel nice_. Multiple desktops work well, nice gestures, simple installers and applications.…

I just switched to Linux because Windows is _really_ bad lately.

I recommend Linux Mint. It has the windows feel for sure. I am not exaggerating when I say it works better than Windows.

I didn’t customize anything. Just installed it and connected to WiFi.

Key things to consider: - installing apps sometimes isn’t as easy as running an exe. But really you get the gist of .deb and .AppImage files really fast. - I don’t game but I’ve heard GPU drivers just work these days. - I am a heavy excel user. LibreOffice isn’t even close. However, for basic stuff it is usable. Excel is too bloated these days anyway so it is a pleasure to work with something that runs fast. YMMV.

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#23

Post by greenavocado » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

baby_souffle wrote: post #13

svrtknst wrote: post #8

I'm not being factious, but is there any Linux distro with a desktop experience that matches Windows and macos? Like, yes, I know there are many flaws with both. A lot of sound, technical issues with windows and macos. A slew of UX ones as well. But despite W11 carrying around remnants of Windows 98 still, both of those OSes _feel nice_. Multiple desktops work well, nice gestures, simple installers and applications.…

> Is ther eany OS/desktop where you dont pay the "linux tax" when it comes to how the GUI feels? That'll depend on how much time you want to invest. /r/unixporn has a lot of _beautiful_ looking desktops but almost all of them come with a non-trivial list of configuration files and plugins ... etc. > or have missed a lot of features that commercial OSes have, installing programs is a mix of flatpaks, APKs, and buildin…

AppImage is the clear winner on the Linux desktop for things that aren't in the repos or for users that are unwilling to engage with apt too much. AppImage provides a macOS like Application experience. Flatpak is on life support; there isn't much going on there but it still works.

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#24

Post by GuinansEyebrows » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

Rohansi wrote: post #15

stronglikedan wrote: post #3

hate is the perfect word. you can't even drag anything onto the taskbar icons yet, and maybe never will be able to. just one small example of many, of why hate is the perfect word

You can drag files etc. onto taskbar icons and it will bring that window to the foreground for you to choose where to drop it. What else do you expect dragging things onto the taskbar icons to do?

not OP, but in macOS, you can drag a file onto a dock icon and that program will open the file if possible. very handy - i use it with Xld, an audio transcoding app. it runs quietly in the background and whenever i need to convert a bunch of FLACs to MP3 (or whatever) i can just drag the folder to the icon and 10 seconds later everything is good to go, without ever really directly interacting with Xld.

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#25

Post by cyphax » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

svrtknst wrote: post #8

I'm not being factious, but is there any Linux distro with a desktop experience that matches Windows and macos? Like, yes, I know there are many flaws with both. A lot of sound, technical issues with windows and macos. A slew of UX ones as well. But despite W11 carrying around remnants of Windows 98 still, both of those OSes _feel nice_. Multiple desktops work well, nice gestures, simple installers and applications.…

KDE and Gnome are the most prominent and they "match" in the sense that they are mature environments that are quite usable. These have been in development for decades. For some reason, in the case of Windows, that doesn't mean much. I've never seen a Windows version with a buggy task bar but here comes Windows 11 with a task bar that forgets application icons (and replaces them with the generic application icon) and is generally sluggish to the feel, in my experience. Scrap my entire first sentence: it's Microsoft's turn to make an operating system as good as the competition.

There are several good quality distributions. Linux Mint is often mentioned, it comes in different flavors, including its own Cinnamon, which would also not feel too alien to the average Windows user. In my opinion, Fedora is also a good choice based on the last few years of running it on various laptops.

It's very easy to run some popular distribution in a virtual machine to get a feel for things if you're just curious.

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#26

Post by greenavocado » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

reorder9695 wrote: post #20

svrtknst wrote: post #8

I'm not being factious, but is there any Linux distro with a desktop experience that matches Windows and macos? Like, yes, I know there are many flaws with both. A lot of sound, technical issues with windows and macos. A slew of UX ones as well. But despite W11 carrying around remnants of Windows 98 still, both of those OSes _feel nice_. Multiple desktops work well, nice gestures, simple installers and applications.…

Once you get it set up (which can be a pain) arch with KDE plasma is very good. KDE is very windows 10 like and intuitive. Arch gets rid of that issue of a mix of different installation methods, other than installing yay, I've never had to manually install something beyond "yay -S pkg", the aur and PKGBUILD files do really solve this issue of painful installations.

There really isn't much to set up especially for anybody diving in with Kubuntu

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#27

Post by greenavocado » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 7:36 PM UTC

snailmailman wrote: post #17

svrtknst wrote: post #8

I'm not being factious, but is there any Linux distro with a desktop experience that matches Windows and macos? Like, yes, I know there are many flaws with both. A lot of sound, technical issues with windows and macos. A slew of UX ones as well. But despite W11 carrying around remnants of Windows 98 still, both of those OSes _feel nice_. Multiple desktops work well, nice gestures, simple installers and applications.…

The KDE plasma UI feels like all the best parts of windows 10 to me. The default taskbar+clock+system tray+start menu UI feels exactly like windows 10 to me. But you can also customize it very easily. The settings menu feels a bit more like MacOS than windows’ control panel though. Several linux distros use that UI. Im on NixOS but i probably wouldn’t recommend that as a starting place. I’ve used bazzite and it worke…

The recommendation for the average inexperienced user trying out Linux for the first time should be Kubuntu. Full stop. Saying this as an Arch and Gentoo user.

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#28

Post by matkoniecz » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 7:37 PM UTC

svrtknst wrote: post #8

I'm not being factious, but is there any Linux distro with a desktop experience that matches Windows and macos? Like, yes, I know there are many flaws with both. A lot of sound, technical issues with windows and macos. A slew of UX ones as well. But despite W11 carrying around remnants of Windows 98 still, both of those OSes _feel nice_. Multiple desktops work well, nice gestures, simple installers and applications.…

> is there any Linux distro with a desktop experience that matches Windows and macos?

I guess if you look for one you can find Linux distribution with ads in start menu

> But despite W11 carrying around remnants of Windows 98 still, both of those OSes _feel nice_.

not to me

> Multiple desktops work well, nice gestures, simple installers and applications. Stuff often just works.

For me on Lubuntu my two desktops work well. Required a bit of googling how to setup, but it took me more time to fail at removing similar Windows annoyance.

Package managers are great, I have configuration of my packages in Ansible and single script run installs all my software except VSCodium and Android Studio.

Stuff nearly often just works.

Not sure what you mean by gestures.

> installing programs is a mix of flatpaks, APKs, and building from source.

Even that beats what I remember from my Windows days that required going through billion of installer wizards, with decent chunk of them trying to bring some unwanted stuff.

And my install is nearly pure install from OS packages with some minor annoyance for Android Studio and VSCodium.

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#29

Post by DetroitThrow » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 7:37 PM UTC

svrtknst wrote: post #8

I'm not being factious, but is there any Linux distro with a desktop experience that matches Windows and macos? Like, yes, I know there are many flaws with both. A lot of sound, technical issues with windows and macos. A slew of UX ones as well. But despite W11 carrying around remnants of Windows 98 still, both of those OSes _feel nice_. Multiple desktops work well, nice gestures, simple installers and applications.…

Linux Mint/Cinnamon matches Windows GUI and maybe makes a lot of things better. You may need to pay the Linux tax in a few other areas, but as far as UI and basic tools/settings aspects, they have it really good.

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#30

Post by lawn » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 7:37 PM UTC

svrtknst wrote: post #8

I'm not being factious, but is there any Linux distro with a desktop experience that matches Windows and macos? Like, yes, I know there are many flaws with both. A lot of sound, technical issues with windows and macos. A slew of UX ones as well. But despite W11 carrying around remnants of Windows 98 still, both of those OSes _feel nice_. Multiple desktops work well, nice gestures, simple installers and applications.…

I installed CachyOS with KDE Plasma for my 8 year old and it feels way better than Windows or MacOS, with fewer bugs too.