Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#941

Post by dietr1ch » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 12:20 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #633

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…

> 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…

Are you sure it's the corporate tracker? Maybe it's the copilot tracker, or maybe the Recall video recording? Maybe it's the Windows anti-virus, or even the corporate anti-virus. What about the Advertisement stuff and the web search?

It's hard to tell what makes a non-stock Windows install slow.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#942

Post by pedro_caetano » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 12:24 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #633

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…

> 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…

> I can almost guarantee this is from some endpoint management software your company installed.

I had the same issue with a loan machine from a client, super responsive onsite, but once I connected through a VPN from an external network, all the basic functionality in the file manager was brought to a halt. Even something as simple as right click on a folder to show a context menu would take several seconds.

The files were all local (also with Onedrive sync disabled) so I am almost positive it was whatever they were using for endpoint protection (Can't recall 100% but probably something from CrowdStrike).

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#943

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 12:46 PM UTC

signal11 wrote: post #835

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…

>> 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 > I can almost guarantee this is from some endpoint management software your company installed. You can repro this on demo Surface laptops at Costco. It’s not a good look when expensive laptops render their darn File Explorer slowly. Also re endpoint management, corpora…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#944

Post by zeratax » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 12:47 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #633

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…

> 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…

on my corporate laptop as well as my own private surface laptop as well as my gaming rig does file explorer lag doing pretty much anything and the context menu can sometimes take like 10 seconds to open. this is a pretty wide spread issue you can see people mention this everywhere

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#945

Post by fraaancis » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 1:03 PM UTC

If you can handle Linux, you should try Reaper as a DAW. It's really great.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#946

Post by Friedduck » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 1:22 PM UTC

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…

You can disable windows folder type detection to speed the laggy file explorer navigation. It’s a registry hack and so limited for corporate machines.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#947

Post by LoveMortuus » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 1:46 PM UTC

signal11 wrote: post #835

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…

>> 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 > I can almost guarantee this is from some endpoint management software your company installed. You can repro this on demo Surface laptops at Costco. It’s not a good look when expensive laptops render their darn File Explorer slowly. Also re endpoint management, corpora…

> Microsoft isn’t a mute participant in the corporate device market.

This is 100% on point! For the past three years all of my in-office work was done on a ChromeBox running ChromeOS, I work in a contact center, but my specific project does not focus on customers but other stuff.

At first I thought they did this because Chrome-anything is usually cheap, but the devices they give us are all around or above $1000, so now I think we use them only because the client wants us to use them, since on some other projects they do use Windows, but with this client we have A LOT of project and A LOT of work, so it's not like we're the exception.

I think with the advent of SteamOS, ChromeOS and Android merging, we could legit see a serious move away from Windows, even in corporate worlds, but who knows, my vision could just be clouded, I'm not a genius or some smart person like a bunch of people here on HN, I work for basically a minimum salary (Portugal), live in a room, that the company that hires me, rents to me, and read HN mostly for entertainment.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#948

Post by junga » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

thefz wrote: post #824

pzo wrote: post #612

Its was a good read until at the end ... > For the remainder of 2026, Microsoft is cooking up a big one: replacing more and more native apps with React Native. But don't let the name fool you, there's nothing "native" about it. These are projects designed to be easily ported across any machine and architecture, because underneath it all, it's just JavaScript. And each one spawns its own Chromium process, gobbling up…

I'm a little tired of "hey I installed Linux!" posts. Ok, you installed Linux. Great. Wow! Now what, wanna show a screenshot of your desktop with an anime girl as the baackground and neofetch in a terminal window?

neofetch is outdated. fastfetch is the new neofetch now.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#949

Post by snarfy » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

fuzzy2 wrote: post #63

snarfy wrote: post #13

It's not going to get any better. Microsoft's problem is tech debt. Copilot doesn't pay tech debt it creates it. It will only get worse faster.

Microsoft probably has a problem with tech debt, yes. That is however not the problem. Instead, the product strategy is. And it was bad even before LLMs.

This is true. The constantly changing strategy is what left the wave of debt behind it.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#950

Post by tekfen » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

I was a big fan of windows and I am still currently using it but recently, I am getting weird problems, crashes, frozen laptop etc. So right now, after 23 years later, I decided to switch MacOS. I've used it before but couldn't adapt because I was efficiently using windows with no-alternatives tools in MacOS. But anymore, Windows is no longer usable, it's unbearable.