- Bloat: software packages and services that cannot be entirely removed (at least not without 3rd party tools) like Edge, OneDrive, Copilot, etc.
- Requiring a MS account
- Their focus on adding new features and changing visual elements to make things feel fresh (and justify their asking price) at the cost of stability -- both in terms of system stability (it's absurd how often file explorer windows crash in Windows 11 compared to Windows 7) and in terms of user interface stability, aka being able to find what you want because it's where it was in the past.
- The settings tool is disorganized and many settings that were in it in previous versions aren't in it at all. Those settings are still available if you can find the right .msc to access them. Many settings are only available through the registry because they plainly don't want you to change them (for example, restoring the Windows 10 style context menus or disabling "News and Interests" on the start menu).
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Linux:
- Surprisingly suffers from the same settings chaos. Desktop distros often have control panels for some common settings but inevitably I always find myself editing some random config text file to fix something (like broken wifi or bluetooth).
- The directory structure is nonsense and not clearly defined. As an example, it's a crap shoot if a random github project is setup to use /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, or /opt/bin. I regularly see sys admins deploy software to /var. Even standard commands like mkdir might be in /bin or /usr/bin depending on the distro. It's the wild west. Software is often hardcoded to use specific paths, so fixing the directory structure would require serious effort (take a look at what Gobo Linux had to do to attempt this). To be fair: the directory structure in Windows is also riddled with redundant, ambiguous, and unused folders, but you have to dive into those folders much less often on Windows.
- Poor or delayed hardware support.
- Audio latency, wifi, bluetooth, and high res video playback all continue to be a crap shoot.
- Bloat: software packages and services that cannot be entirely removed (at least not without 3rd party tools) like Edge, OneDrive, Copilot, etc.
- Requiring a MS account
- Their focus on adding new features and changing visual elements to make things feel fresh (and justify their asking price) at the cost of stability -- both in terms of system stability (it's absurd how often file explorer windows crash in Windows 11 compared to Windows 7) and in terms of user interface stability, aka being able to find what you want because it's where it was in the past.
- The settings tool is disorganized and many settings that were in it in previous versions aren't in it at all. Those settings are still available if you can find the right .msc to access them. Many settings are only available through the registry because they plainly don't want you to change them (for example, restoring the Windows 10 style context menus or disabling "News and Interests" on the start menu).
- Ads
Linux:
- Surprisingly suffers from the same settings chaos. Desktop distros often have control panels for some common settings but inevitably I always find myself editing some random config text file to fix something (like broken wifi or bluetooth).
- The directory structure is nonsense and not clearly defined. As an example, it's a crap shoot if a random github project is setup to use /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, or /opt/bin. I regularly see sys admins deploy software to /var. Even standard commands like mkdir might be in /bin or /usr/bin depending on the distro. It's the wild west. Software is often hardcoded to use specific paths, so fixing the directory structure would require serious effort (take a look at what Gobo Linux had to do to attempt this). To be fair: the directory structure in Windows is also riddled with redundant, ambiguous, and unused folders, but you have to dive into those folders much less often on Windows.
- Poor or delayed hardware support.
- Audio latency, wifi, bluetooth, and high res video playback all continue to be a crap shoot.