Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#791

Post by array_key_first » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 9:46 PM UTC

wackget wrote: post #493

Orygin wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UI framework balkanization has always been, and remains a hideous mess I thought you were talking about Windows there. There are 4 (5?) different UI paradigms within Windows, and doing one thing sometimes requires you to interact with each of them. At least on Linux, with GTK/KDE, you can pick a camp and have a somewhat consistent experience, with a few outliers. Plus many apps now just use CSD and fully integrate…

If we're talking about mass adoption of Linux then there really has to be no concept of even "picking a camp". The vast majority of users - even techy people - will not understand what a window manager is, never mind be capable of choosing one. Yes, there are many UI implementations in Windows but they are almost totally transparent to the user (no pun intended), and they can all run on the same system at once.

The same is true of Linux - GTK3 apps runs just fine on Plasma, and so do GTK4, and Qt 5, and Qt 6, and X11 apps, and on.

Sure they all look slightly different, but it's definitely worse on Windows in that regard.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#792

Post by 8bitsrule » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 9:49 PM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #95

reconnecting wrote: post #5

Apple forced me to switch to Linux! Linux should consider paying Microsoft and Apple for new customers. Perhaps the customer acquisition funnel is quite long, at least it took 20 years of using Apple in my case before switching to Debian ( Xfce ), but it was worth it!

As a regular linux user for the last 20 years, who had used windows for games for about 25 of the last 30 years. When I had gotten a macbook pro for work in a company that was all apple there were three things that stood out: The M processors are amazing, the apple hardware is really good, and mac os is absolutely awful. I have no idea how people use mac.

Interesting. My experience over a decade was that (expensive) Apple hardware was unreliable or poorly designed ... from the IIsi to the iMac. One exception: the murdered Power clone was great. The iMac vertical screen-stripe fiasco (affected hundreds of users within the warranty period, before they shut down the forum, then took years to respond to) was capped with a hard-drive fail after a year. My 'never again' still in effect 15 years later.

My home-made AMD tower is in its 6th year (running Linux) with no, zero, fails.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#793

Post by sedatk » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 9:51 PM UTC

CamouflagedKiwi wrote: post #610

sedatk wrote: post #382

My story is simpler. Microsoft dropped the support for Windows 10 and gave me no upgrade path to Windows 11 because my CPU was 5 years too old apparently. So I installed Fedora on that machine, I learned the process, I went through the hurdles. It wasn’t seamless. But, Fedora never said “I can’t”. When it was over, it was fine. Only if Microsoft had just let me install Windows 11 and suffer whatever the perf problem…

I have a similar issue with Windows. The machine already dual-boots Linux, but it is simultaneously demanding Windows 11 and telling me that it doesn't support it. It's a three year old Ryzen, it plays every game I've thrown at it flawlessly - which admittedly is only just so many things, but if it could manage Oblivion Remastered at launch it should manage a bloody operating system surely. I hear it might be some TP…

I had an issue with TPM too, enabling PTT (Intel's on-chip TPM) on BIOS fixed that one.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#794

Post by sedatk » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

stagger87 wrote: post #631

sedatk wrote: post #382

My story is simpler. Microsoft dropped the support for Windows 10 and gave me no upgrade path to Windows 11 because my CPU was 5 years too old apparently. So I installed Fedora on that machine, I learned the process, I went through the hurdles. It wasn’t seamless. But, Fedora never said “I can’t”. When it was over, it was fine. Only if Microsoft had just let me install Windows 11 and suffer whatever the perf problem…

Why did you want to install windows 11 anyways? I also have a PC stuck on Windows 10 and it makes me happy that it's now stable and not part of the forced rolling releases in Win11. Im going to run it on Win10 as long as I can.

Lack of security updates is a problem for a computer that's connected to internet.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#795

Post by iwisjwudjqjdw » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 9:56 PM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #277

giancarlostoro wrote: post #68

This was me in 2022 or 2023. I have posted on HN about my shift a few times. I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig, and I couldn't add new users, one program told me to use the other program which brought me back to the original program... I had to go out of my way, buy a license just to make it work. I just went and installed L…

I've been using Fedora+KDE for over a decade, Windows 8 was last version of Windows I had installed at home, and we all know what a squarified mess that was. Gnome is fine, but it's just not for me. For everyone on here that complains about Windows requiring an 'online' account, MacOS does as well, but the perception is different. MacOS, just kind of quietly does it, with no ceremony, but Windows does a Ballmer-esque…

The Mac 100% does not require you to sign in to an Apple Account to use it. You can go about with a local account only just fine and you can easily do it right from the OOBE setup UI — no tricks involved whatsoever.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#796

Post by stouset » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 9:58 PM UTC

niam wrote: post #755

Aurornis wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows 11's file browser lags when opening directories with more than 100-ish files. Windows 11's file browser takes a few seconds to open at all. > Context menus take a noticeable amount of time to appear. I can almost guarantee this is from some endpoint management software your company installed. I have a Windows 11 workstation that I use all the time for some CAD software and the occasional game. Everything is…

If I were an assuming feller I'd "almost guarantee" that you haven't been blessed/cursed with anything besides Windows 11. A lot of my beef, personally, can be chalked up to Windows' aggressively long animation times. It's serviceable with them turned off. But even with animations turned off on an aggressively debloated consumer PC there is either a notable delay or a perception thereof in context menus and file expl…

Speaking of animations, it’s shocking to me how bad they are.

I turned on hiding the taskbar the other day. I don’t think they’ve changed it since Windows 95. I have a modern gaming laptop, and the animation is purely linear, no acceleration. It feels so weirdly unnatural. Even worse, it’s not smoothly animated! I have a 120Hz monitor but it seems to be animated at 5fps.

Nobody on the Windows team seems to give a single shit at all.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#797

Post by ActorNightly » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 9:59 PM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #68

This was me in 2022 or 2023. I have posted on HN about my shift a few times. I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig, and I couldn't add new users, one program told me to use the other program which brought me back to the original program... I had to go out of my way, buy a license just to make it work. I just went and installed L…

> gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig,

If you are spending 2000 for a gaming rig, a pro windows is like $200. Makes no sense.

Also, Apple is no better than Windows, so your post doesn't make sense.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#798

Post by TacticalCoder » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 10:02 PM UTC

yoyohello13 wrote: post #443

ryukoposting wrote: post #259

I just started a new job where I'm subjected to Windows 11. They gave me a behemoth of a laptop. 64GB of RAM, absolute screamer of a CPU, big GPU, the whole deal. Windows 11's file browser lags when opening directories with more than 100-ish files. Windows 11's file browser takes a few seconds to open at all. Context menus take a noticeable amount of time to appear. I'm getting used to a new keyboard, so I keep hitti…

My wife recently got a new laptop. She mostly just uses office and the browser so I gave her some specs to look for SSD, 16GB ram, Lenovo should be good (fatal mistake I didn't specify the CPU). She went out and bought a cheap Lenovo laptop with a Celeron dual core and 16GB ram, SSD. It can barely run windows 11. Everything slows to a crawl, she can't be on a video call, and have a google doc open at the same time. I…

> I may just try to load ChromeOS on it.

If you wife would be OK with ChromeOS, basically all she needs is a browser. I just installed Linux on the computer my wife is using. For a while she was on Ubuntu and then once she got used to it, I replaced Ubuntu with Debian (because I use Debian everywhere: NUCs, laptop, dekstops, servers, hypervisor (Proxmox, which is debian), etc.). It's easier for me to just slap Debian everywhere but YMMV.

People have no idea the amount of people who nowadays only need a browser (and working sound/microphone: but that nowadays Just Works [TM] on Linux).

It's never been easier to switch people to Linux than it is today.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#799

Post by glenstein » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 10:03 PM UTC

Gud wrote: post #558

ufmace wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the exact same boat. I was a little unhappy with the ads etc in Windows, but perfectly willing to give Windows 11 a try. But Microsoft decreed that my admittedly a bit old but perfectly workable CPU was incompatible, due to not having a feature I wasn't interested in. I'd need to replace most of my existing hardware to switch. So why not try Linux? It certainly seems reasonable when Windows apparently needs mo…

Linux is superlatively awesome and I say that as a FreeBSD user.

And I say it as a Linux user. My story is breathing life into old hardware back in the 2010s without having to spend any money, and just enjoying the No Man's Sky style freedom of exploring a whole new world of how a desktop operating system could look in feel and work, unmoored from the background sickness of thinking everything I do is channeled into Microsoft telemetry.

If you're the type of person who's capable of falling in love with software and software ecosystems, there's nothing like a first jump into Linux and understanding it as a world ready and waiting for you.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#800

Post by tempestn » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 10:04 PM UTC

niam wrote: post #755

Aurornis wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows 11's file browser lags when opening directories with more than 100-ish files. Windows 11's file browser takes a few seconds to open at all. > Context menus take a noticeable amount of time to appear. I can almost guarantee this is from some endpoint management software your company installed. I have a Windows 11 workstation that I use all the time for some CAD software and the occasional game. Everything is…

If I were an assuming feller I'd "almost guarantee" that you haven't been blessed/cursed with anything besides Windows 11. A lot of my beef, personally, can be chalked up to Windows' aggressively long animation times. It's serviceable with them turned off. But even with animations turned off on an aggressively debloated consumer PC there is either a notable delay or a perception thereof in context menus and file expl…

From the comment you're replying to: "Windows does it better than my mac or Linux boxes by a mile"

So I wouldn't assume they've only used Windows. FWIW I also primarily use Windows 11 currently, but have also used other OS'es. I've experienced frustrations with all of them. Just because it's fast for you doesn't mean it's fast for everyone, and vice-versa. I could certainly buy that more people are having problems with 11 than they did with 10, though it hasn't been my personal experience. Just saying we shouldn't assume our own experiences are universal.