There are so many memes I could easily toss in here to describe my feelings on the current state of Windows

• What have you done to my boy?
• I’m not sad - I’m just disappointed
• I use Arch, btw

But I feel like those don’t even begin to capture just how excruciating it is to use Windows these days. But then, also, I won’t pretend like I ever really liked Windows. Rather, my relationship with Windows has been more Stockholm syndrome than anything.

My History

I began using Windows on my dad’s work laptop. It ran Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. Truly revolutionary. Computers networked together with the ability to send email, all from a graphical user interface on a laptop with a four color LCD. I used it for Microsoft Paint.

It would still be a while before my family got an actual home computer, though. When we did it was a blazing fast Pentium II MMX running Windows 98 the original edition. No bloody second edition here. No sir. It was good enough for Worms: Armageddon and school work. At some point we got online with some of the free dial-up ISPs at the time. What fun!

After that it was time for me to head off to school and I got my very own Athlon-XP machine with Windows XP. It was also at this time that I picked up a box set of Mandrake 8.2 from Best Buy. You best believe they sold whole boxes of Linux at regular computer stores back then! While I was at school with this machine it and its successor basically saw one operating system - Gentoo Linux. The premier Linux distribution. Also I could have it pass an -Os to the compiler for everything and only compile in what I needed so everything could work in 480MB of RAM.

Once I graduated from college I became (a bit) less of a Linux zealot and somewhere along the line I acquired a Toshiba e335 pocket PC. After I started exploring smart phones, I picked up a Zune HD for fun. When the Palm Pre 2 and the Droid had become a bit longer in the tooth, I upgraded my phones to a range of Windows Phone Mobile Phone. My desktop PCs were Windows 7, 8, or 10-based as time went on and I even got a Surface Pro 4 (good tablet!).

I also had to get an Xbox 360, then an Xbox One OG, and finally a Series X for good measure.

In summary, this is what Stockholm syndrome looks like:

• 1 Pocket PC
• 1 Zune HD
• 3 Windows Phone Mobile Phone
• 3 Game systems
• 6 Windows Pro licenses
• 2 Windows Home licenses
• Game Pass sub and Xbox Live sub for too many months

Just to put all of this into a nice, neat package too: I liked the original Windows 8 interface. The tablet interface. The one everyone hated. I was that guy. And now I’m here writing a blog post saying Microsoft has gone too far. Do with that what you will.

Windows Today

That brings us to the current state of affairs. I now have only one machine in my home running “Windows”. That is the Xbox Series X and only because there’s no way to correct that particular issue. Why? Why has someone who bought a Zune HD removed Windows from his life? I think Cory Doctorow probably describes it best – hell he wrote the book on it. Nevertheless, I will regale you with my specific issues with Windows today.

Advertising

I hate ads. I abhor them. They are the bane of my existence and I use any and all means at my disposal to remove them from my life. They are a plague upon society. If I had the ability to magically remove something from existence, I would probably choose cancer. But you better believe I would have to think long and hard before pulling the trigger because ads are a cancer in and of themselves. They convince us to part with our money for things we don’t need. They convince us to ruin our only home in exchange for minor convenience. They convince us to feed ourselves with trash and be happy for the privilege.

Can you guess what Windows has more and more of these days? In Mr. Doctorow’s theory of the operations of capital, all of the value of the customer has been extracted and now Microsoft has moved on. As a result, I now find Windows offensive to my very being. It is excruciating. If Windows were suddenly lost to time, I am now at a point where I may rejoice.

“Where are these ads” you may ask? I’m glad you did.

• When you first boot a Windows machine you will encounter the Out Of Box Experience
  • Do you want Office?
  • Do you want Game Pass?
  • Have you signed up for One Drive lately?
    • Surely you want One Drive! How else are you going to back up your files?
  • You do know some Office features are free, right?
• Then, when you think you’ve successfully navigated the OOBE, here comes the Second Chance Out Of Box Experience. They will intrude upon your home after every major update unless you hunt down the setting in the new Settings app.
  • Please sign up for Office 365!
  • For the love of God sign up for Game Pass!
  • Surely you feel the need of One Drive!
  • Have you tried CoPilot 365? It’s AI!
  • Some office features are free
• The start menu!
  • Would you like a rousing game of Candy Crush?
  • How about some Solitaire (that now requires a Game Pass sub)
  • Office 365 perhaps?

“No” Means “No”

If you can stomach the assault on your very being at every turn, as detailed above, then Microsoft will happily engage in my least favorite of dark patterns – the inability to say “no”. The OOBE and SCOOBE provide no ability in the wizard to just tell it “no”. It will return, and in greater numbers. Want to go download another web browser with Edge? Brace yourself for the incessant alerts telling you just how gosh darn good Edge is these days! Or, if you want to change your default browser, it may not stay set for some reason. These are the only concrete examples I can think of currently, but generally they follow the typical “techbro” style responses. “No” is not an option.

Hardware Relationships

Next, and the thing that absolutely blows my mind, is just how bad Microsoft’s relationship seems to be with their hardware partners.

This problem is most visible to people like me. When a mere mortal buys a laptop from WalMart, it just boots up and works – the OEM handled all of that. But when I buy a PC, I buy parts and assemble them. Then I install Windows manually, as you do. And once Windows is installed, I have to go hunting for drivers for every piece of hardware in my system: graphics card, network card, sound card, the works. Sometimes I can’t even get online to download the drivers I need because the installer doesn’t include the damn WiFi drivers from this decade. The irony is thick: I cannot install Windows because Windows doesn’t know how to talk to the disk I want to install it on.

But here’s the thing – this isn’t just a power user problem. It affects everyone. That “mere mortal” with the WalMart laptop? Their machine works on day one because the OEM set it up. But what happens six months later when there’s a driver update that fixes a security vulnerability, improves battery life, or stops their Bluetooth from randomly disconnecting? Nothing. Nothing happens. Because most driver updates don’t come through Windows Update. Users have to manually seek out updates from the OEM’s website or use some awful OEM update app, neither of which ever happen because normal people have lives to live and they just don’t know.

So everyone suffers: power users can’t install the OS, and regular users are left running stale drivers indefinitely.

When I install Linux, everything generally just works – and keeps working, because driver updates come through the same package manager as everything else. Before you say “oh, but if Microsoft included drivers for everything, the install image would be tens of gigabytes” – your typical Linux install media still fits on a single-layer DVD. The Linux kernel ships with drivers for hardware going back decades and bleeding-edge devices, all in a fraction of the space.

This is enshittification through neglect. Microsoft built a solid driver model decades ago – a quality architecture and a reasonable distribution system for its time. And then they just let it rot. It’s not that they chose the OEMs over you; the OEMs are just as trapped. Who’s going to sell Linux laptops at WalMart? OEMs ship Windows because they have to, and Microsoft knows it. So there’s no incentive to invest in the relationship. No incentive to modernize driver distribution. No incentive to make installation work out of the box for anyone who isn’t buying a prebuilt machine.

Why would they? Nobody can leave. The OEMs need Windows to sell machines, and you need the machines to run… well, you used to need Windows.

So instead of investing in fundamentals, Microsoft coasts on inertia and redirects engineering effort toward what actually drives revenue now: making sure you see that Copilot icon, that OneDrive prompt, that Game Pass upsell. The driver ecosystem? That’s legacy infrastructure. It doesn’t sell subscriptions.

Meanwhile, the Linux community ships working drivers – and updates – because the people building Linux are the people using Linux. Their incentives are aligned with mine. Microsoft’s aren’t.

Privacy

If all of that wasn’t enough, they now have the audacity to hook CoPilot into the base operating system. It wouldn’t be so bad if their whole “CoPilot+” PC initiative meant literally anything. But it doesn’t. Using CoPilot on a new Windows machine means it will be granted the ability to upload whatever it wants to Microsoft Azure for processing. Does this mean anything? Will they use this data for good or for awesome? Will it be used against me in a court of law at some point? I don’t know. But what I do know is that I no longer have control of that future in that scenario. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll be good stewards of my data. Maybe they’ll never be the target of another intrusion attempt ever again. Maybe they’ll let me choose “no” finally.

Now you may find CoPilot or Recall useful or convenient. That’s fine! You don’t need to convince me – I have subscriptions to two different AI companies right now and I have my own local LLM setup. The difference between them and CoPilot in Windows is that I have direct control over what’s uploaded and what they know about me. I absolutely do not trust Microsoft to be a good steward of my data where they have direct control over it in this way, nor do I trust them to honor my wishes in perpetuity. If I say “no” today, they’ll reinterpret that to mean “yes” in the future. And, lest you think these are the ramblings of a crazy man, please review their history.

I use Arch, btw

So where does that leave me? Currently on a variety of Linux machines! I have Fedora Server, I have Bazzite, I have Arch (btw), I have Qubes-OS, and I like trying new stuff. I want to put Gentoo back on a machine here. They aren’t perfect either. This very laptop I’m using right now has a hybrid graphics card setup and, while it mostly works, it absolutely cannot sleep reliably. My Intel Arc A770 16GB Limited Edition in one of my machines is not happy to run a couple games and my Radeon in another machine will crash mere moments into a Helldivers match. Linux has problems, but they can be fixed. They can be fixed because the people using Linux are building Linux.

Linux will never try to sell me something because the people using Linux are the people building Linux. It will not restrict me to “remind me later” options for the same reason. I’ll never have to worry about not having a backup solution because Linux wants to sell me some “Tux Drive” service for the same reason. I’m not a customer. I can be a contributor. I can be a collaborator.

And so those are the reasons I have left Windows. I realized our relationship was no longer beneficial to me and I had the privilege that allowed me to leave. I recognize not everyone can and for that I am sorry, yet hopeful if you want to leave that you will be able to in the future.

So here I am. A Linux user.