Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything

Very important for business customers:

- It is very "standardized" (i.e. there exist no distributions that do things differently from each other).

- It cares about binary backward compatibility: it is nearly always possible to run a binary from 30 years ago, and if you are willing to invest some own effort, eben running Win16 binaries can often be run. Compare this to GUI applications on GNU/Linux.

- The operating system and the applications are very separated. I can basically install every version of an application that I want:

If there exists a newer release of some software than what the "distribution" (which of course does not exist in the Windows world) provides that you want to try out: install it now, you don't have to wait for your distribution. There is also no nightmare that some shared library versions have to fit the ones provides by the distribution.

Similarly, I you want to stay with an older version of a software for a longer time: go for it.

It is a very common situation that for some pieces of software, you have very specific requirements which version you want: with Windows, this is very easy, while on GNU/Linux this is - in my experience - a nightmare for unexperienced users.

- If you build one software release on Windows, it will run on basically every Windows computer (the typical thing that you have to do at most is to additional install a runtime provided by Microsoft (e.g. for C++ or C#)). No consideration necessary how to handle each distribution.

The other potentially obvious question is why bother using an OS that’s out of support when Linux is so good?

I left Windows 11. The last straw wasn’t Microsoft accounts or Windows updates. I actually thought the OS was fine, most OS updates actually added great new features, and anything I considered an annoyance was easy to disable permanently.

Toss your Windows 11 ISO into Rufus and disabling things like Microsoft account requirements is a trivial process.

What I actually rage quit Windows over was AMD graphics drivers and a couple of my video games crashing.

What caught me by surprise is just how little I’d miss it. I thought I’d need to dual boot or run a Windows VM for little random things. Nope, I just don’t need them.

I didn’t expect to find an OS with more software that I tend to like better. Like my email client, where I moved from Thunderbird to Evolution and for the most part I find that to be a step up in user experience.

Yes it’s hard to see Microsoft become what feels to me a shell of what it once was. Back in the day I got MCP certification and MCSA certification for server 2008/2003.

I managed fleets of windows devices and felt Windows and PC’s were efficient and had a good balance of an operating system and schema that is powerful and effective.

With windows 11.. it’s like an all time low emerged. Where I am just fighting against a platform trying a variety of gimmicks designed to extra rents and push tools that are not really all that useful or polished.

Windows 11 feels bloated and just feels like a struggle.

For me it really is the time of Linux. Whether it be a workstation, a server or even a simple kiosk… Linux just seems to embrace the ethos of what windows has left behind.

Oddly I’m like mostly using proprietary Windows software on my Linux machine these days (games).

I also think the AI era goes very far in eliminating those 5% problems. I have a mostly non-technical friend who set up an old laptop with Linux for the first time and he told me that he’d never have been able to do it on his own without AI. Anytime there’s an issue, his solution is just a quick question or copy/paste away.

I hope more people boycott products that require making an account to use. Most developers who would care about this sort of thing seem to draw the line at requiring a subscription, but IMO requiring an account is just as bad. There are cases where you do need an account for syncing data or whatever, but I don't see why I need an account for a fitness tracker, just show me the stats on the watch itself. Worst example of this is phones requiring an account to let you install apps, how did we let them get away with this?