And this is exactly why Microsoft can get away with a buggy mess of a user hostile operating system.
They only have an incentive to make a good OS if people are willing to leave when it’s a bad one.
lousken•Feb 7, 2026
exactly, he's part of a problem
billy99k•Feb 7, 2026
I could also say the Linux desktop creators are the problem as well. It's so buggy, it makes it impossible for me to switch.
prmoustache•Feb 7, 2026
This doesn't make any sense as there is not a linux desktop but multiples and the major ones have been less buggy than windows for the most part of the last 20 years.
Hardware support is where Linux used to struggle. Nowadays things aren't perfect but much better. Basically it means you need to figure out which hardware to buy based on available support, before making the purchase.
lousken•Feb 7, 2026
What desktop and which distro? In the past, there have been times where a bug showed up for me over the years, especially before 2018. Currently tho, Debian 13 + KDE - zero issues.
xigoi•Feb 7, 2026
Which “the” Linux desktop? GNOME? KDE? xfce? Cinnamon? COSMIC?
xeromal•Feb 8, 2026
This question reinforces the point IMO
bdavbdav•Feb 7, 2026
Who are these “creators”? Can you point to them? Is there a legal entity?
Spooky23•Feb 8, 2026
Honestly, that’s a 2016 argument. I flipped a few contact centers over to Linux desktops and had very few issues. If anything we probably spent 5x the resources getting Windows 11 certified internally.
Microsoft knows it, but they don’t care about windows. When IBM started offering Macs to employees, they figured out that the support burden was very low, significantly lower than windows, even with users having years of windows experience.
Intune was supposed to be the answer to that, making Windows management MDM like. But for their most entrenched enterprise customers, they can’t really switch without co-managing with Configuration Manager. Most of the people behind that product are laid off or otherwise attrited, as there’s no path to a subscription service.
wrs•Feb 7, 2026
"I'm still a _______ guy, and I always will be."
No matter what trademark you put in the blank, this is not a healthy thing to say.
embedding-shape•Feb 7, 2026
Yeah, not sure how people form almost "relationships" with their tools and refuse sometimes to even explore options. I'm always open to switching almost anything. I never end up doing, because things are usually not better, but maybe 1/100 times something is better, and then I switch. Initially did that around Ubuntu 9.10 before, and I'll switch away from Arch in a heartbeat if anything better comes around.
Edit: I realize now that the article author, the person in the video and the quoted tweet are all the same person, and they seem to work/run windowscentral.com, so I guess that kind of explains the motivation.
expedition32•Feb 7, 2026
Honestly as a deeply antisocial person the Linux cult has always rubbed me the wrong way. Same reason why I don't have an iPhone.
loloquwowndueo•Feb 7, 2026
What do you use then?
Archelaos•Feb 7, 2026
What about "Linux"? It is also a registered trademark.
charlesabarnes•Feb 7, 2026
For Linux as well. In my opinion you shouldn't remain blind to the benefits of other operating systems
BadBadJellyBean•Feb 7, 2026
I think saying "I'm a _______ guy" with any brand or company filling that blank can be a big problem. Most companies are there to make money and loyalty is often a one way street.
From my view it is more productive to find out what you like about something and always be open to maybe finding someone else who can deliver on that. And sometimes things that we thought were essential are not. You might even find something new to like.
arcologies1985•Feb 8, 2026
What about "I'm a Linux guy?" I don't pay any company for my Linux OSes. My favorites are nonprofits and mostly interchangeable.
john01dav•Feb 7, 2026
Apple has an even bigger loyalty problem. For them and Microsoft it's arguably good, but it's bad for users, even the loyal ones. It might even be bad for Apple and Microsoft long term.
Quothling•Feb 8, 2026
I'm not saying Apple can't go the way of Microsoft, but if you've used macOS and Windows through the previous 5 years there isn't much of a comparison. Windows has gone from something I tolerated to something I absolutely dislike using. It's so bad that if it wasn't for WSL then I would consider finding a place to work where they didn't force me to use Windows. MacOS on the other hand hasn't really changed.
The moment someone makes a non macbook air, that does the same as a macbook air in terms of being cold to touch, battery life and no-noise I'm leaving for Linux though.
cosmic_cheese•Feb 8, 2026
> The moment someone makes a non macbook air, that does the same as a macbook air in terms of being cold to touch, battery life and no-noise I'm leaving for Linux though.
I think a lot of people are waiting for a non-Apple Macbook, but we unfortunately might be waiting for a while. It seems to pain other manufacturers to not cut corners in some critical area or another…
dist-epoch•Feb 7, 2026
Goes the other way around too: Linux will only have a good desktop environment when it's users will be willing to leave it.
xigoi•Feb 7, 2026
I recently started using COSMIC and I would definitely call it good, even if it has a few rough edges due to just recently coming out of beta.
bigstrat2003•Feb 7, 2026
I mean, from my perspective Linux has multiple good desktop environments. I've used both Cinnamon and KDE for years and have found both perfectly pleasant to use.
Mordisquitos•Feb 7, 2026
> Linux will only have a good desktop environment when it's users will be willing to leave it.
Putting aside the debate as to the quality of desktop environments, I honestly hope you're being intentionally nonsensical as a joke. What you describe can only make sense under the grossly misinformed belief that "Linux" is a monolithic entity incentivised to stop its users from "leaving it", and that this mythical "Linux" would have the agency to decide it needed "a good desktop environment" in order to avoid that from happening.
ErroneousBosh•Feb 7, 2026
Linux has had several good desktop environments for well over 20 years.
When is Windows going to get a good desktop environment?
wolvoleo•Feb 8, 2026
Linux desktop environments are developed by its users wanting the best experience possible.
Windows is designed by a committee that tries to do as little as possible and has ulterior motives higher on the priority scale than UX. Like marketing copilot and other Microsoft subscription services. Microsoft software is always aimed to be just good enough for the users to not choose something better. They love just coasting on their marketshare without doing much to improve. Like they did with internet explorer and now do with office.
blibble•Feb 8, 2026
> Linux desktop environments are developed by its users wanting the best experience possible.
have you used GNOME?
pxc•Feb 8, 2026
I'm a lifelong KDE person but it's still clear to me that GNOME is crafted with care, and I find it pretty usable.
Aloha•Feb 7, 2026
Who is better?
monooso•Feb 7, 2026
I think you're missing the point.
If a friend stated that they will stay with their partner regardless of how deceptive or abusive said partner's behaviour becomes, you would rightly question the wisdom of that choice.
Stating that you will remain loyal to a company come what may is even worse. It's an entity with no interest in your wellbeing. It exists to extract as much money or information from you as possible.
Quite apart from everything else, such a statement eliminates the prospect of ever finding something better.
navigate8310•Feb 8, 2026
For folks that still like the win32 ecosystem, they should pirate the heck out of LTSC. just as Microsoft don't have interest in them, they shouldn't give a damn about it and enjoy a dramatically polished Windows experience.
bdavbdav•Feb 7, 2026
Came here to post this, what an asinine thing to say.
guidedlight•Feb 7, 2026
I’m my experience, unwavering Windows folk are simply power users who find *nix shells burdensome.
wesammikhail•Feb 7, 2026
I deploy all my code on linux and have been thinking about switching from windows to linux for my daily driver. But even I dread that. It´s as if linux has tried as hard as possible to make every single little thing as complicated as possible.
imho, user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape. There is very little focus on that. People will tell you try this or that distro. But once you run into a simple problem, it´s often a rabbit hole of a gazilling cli commands to fix it. In the mean time you´re praying to god to not brick something that used to work before.
conception•Feb 8, 2026
Lucky now you can just ask an LLM to diagnose and offer ways to fix it. Takes 99% of the trouble away.
nixosbestos•Feb 8, 2026
If I could wave a wand and ban a single class of comments on HN, it would be this. Rambling, non-specific handwaving useless text.
> user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape.
It's ignorant, and its insulting, and it's stupid. You can read one or two KDE blog posts, look at the roadmap for Cosmic, look at the attention Valve has put into Linux and know that sentence is just rude. It's just so frustrating.
> People will tell you try this or that distro.
Dumbasses on reddit will. No one that has a single clue encourages distro-hopping.
Spooky23•Feb 8, 2026
More like people who won’t bite the hand the feeds them.
pavel_lishin•Feb 7, 2026
> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be.
There's a semi-common saying that it takes seven attempts for someone to successfully leave an abusive partner. Give him time, I guess.
layer8•Feb 8, 2026
It likely just means they will always prefer certain classic aspects of Windows over how other desktop OSs do things. I’m largely in that boat as well. Of course Windows could get so bad in the future that another OS will be the lesser evil. Or another OS could adopt those preferred Windows things. But it won’t change the mentioned preferences, hence “always”.
bsder•Feb 8, 2026
Agreed. I had the version of Notepad++ that got popped and was being nagged by Fusion 360, so I decided to burn everything down, get a new SSD, and install a copy of Windows 11.
Holy sh*t! I haven't had this bad a Windows install experience since Windows 95.
The first big obstacle is getting all the Secure Boot/TPM 2.0 BIOS settings right. When you don't, you simply get "Can't install Windows". No debugging information. No clarification. No details. Shades of the day of having to blindly set the I/O interrupts and addresses on Windows. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiiit, Fail. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiit, Fail. etc.
Then the second obstacle is getting a local account installed. The solution was obscure, but straightforward. Finding that solution on the glop that has become the Internet? Bleaaaaagh. Everything has to be a bloody video for something that's one stupid command. And all the AI systems aren't useful because their horizon is too old and Microslop keeps changing the command; presumably because too many people are using it (How dare they not make cloud number go up! Brrrrrrrrr!) After all was said and done, I got "lucky" because I actually bought a retail copy of Windows 11 from Best Buy--the image was "old" enough that the "old" way of doing the install still worked (Shift F10 to prompt -> OOBE\BYPASSNRO -> reboot for those who want to know)
At last, after almost 90 minutes of farting around, Windows starts to install. And install. And install. And install ... FOR HOURS! WTF IS IT DOING! The target machine is a smoking AMD desktop with SSD and a gigantic amount of pre-shortage RAM on fibre. How in the name of all that is holy and unholy do you install that slowly on that powerful a machine?
Finally, everything gets installed. And I reboot ... to no video. Oh, no, I bet it scrambled the drivers. Sure enough, I move the HDMI from my AMD card to the AMD integrated video ... yep, there it is. Sigh. Let's go get DDU and uninstall the dumbass driver that Windows Install dumped on there. Download, download, install, reboot to safe mode, clean, install proper driver, reboot. Back on my main card, now.
Finally, let's dump a recovery image because I sure don't want to have to go through this gigantic PITA again if something goes wrong. Plug in the drive, can't find it ... ah, had a Linux image that needs to be wiped out, my fault ... need the Windows partition editor, so launch and erase ... wait, why can't I edit anything? ... oh, right, dumbass, you need to launch it as Administrator ... close ... open the menu, there's the app, right click menu ...
WTF! There's no "Run as Administrator" so I can't edit the partitions! Right click a couple of other programs ... some of them have the "Run as Administrator" but some of them DON'T. And there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which is which. Curse. Swear. FINE! Plug drive into my Linux laptop, kill the partitions there, and eject. Plug into Windows ... which now sees the drive and creates a recovery disk ... happy happy joy joy <rolls eyes>.
4+ hours! Not even exaggerating. <cries>
And because I'm a glutton for punishment, I decided I'd put Linux on the old reformatted SSD. Since I used Windows for gaming about as much as Fusion 360, I figured I'd go for something Linux but gaming-optimized and snag Bazzite which I'd never used before. Download, install, login, connect to Steam, run game.
Total time: no more than 20 minutes.
No fighting about cloud login. No video card problem. Games are running fine.
Anyone still using Windows as an individual nowadays is completely and utterly daft.
chrisjj•Feb 7, 2026
> I couldn't open Notepad ... an error (0x803f8001) with Microsoft Store's licensing service stopped me
I wonder if it works at all with no online connection to that store.
> I couldn't open Notepad ... an error (0x803f8001) with Microsoft Store's licensing service stopped me
I wonder if it works at all when no online connection to that store.
mysterydip•Feb 7, 2026
“But what if people used notepad without our permission?!” -dev/boss somewhere
chrisjj•Feb 7, 2026
"But I bought it!" - naïve customer somewhere
vhalan•Feb 7, 2026
I only use my windows machine because I can swap out parts stuff and is more hackable but macos is so much more beautifully designed.
Sometimes I prefer one machine over the other I rarely wish for anything other than sometimes being unable to transfer data between the two systems.
josephcsible•Feb 7, 2026
> I only use my windows machine because I can swap out parts stuff and is more hackable but macos is so much more beautifully designed.
That's definitely a good reason to use a PC instead of a Mac, but why not run Linux on it? Then you'd get the best of both worlds.
mh-•Feb 7, 2026
I would not describe the Linux desktop experience as the best of both Mac and Windows.
Let's go with different, a different world.
sandworm101•Feb 7, 2026
Every horrible windows story is yet another glorious day for linux.
Fyi, in Mint if you search application for "notepad", "Text Editor" is the first result. That is curated search done right. Search for notepad on windows and you probably get an ad for a travel website.
plagiarist•Feb 7, 2026
It just makes sense to show travel deals. Why would an OS show text editors when searching for text editors? Obviously it can show something far more lucrative by matching what it knows from spyware AI taking screenshots of your every action.
AviationAtom•Feb 7, 2026
Cinnamon is cool and all but I prefer KDE Plasma. It seems to eliminate all the pain points Linux desktop environments typically have and everything just works. Pair it with Debian and you got a solid system.
avtar•Feb 7, 2026
> Pair it with Debian
A KDE dev mentioned on a podcast that issues related to Debian Stable get closed automatically on their bug tracker because fixes don't get backported :/
My wife was complaining about Windows issues so I ended up installing Fedora with KDE on her laptop. I would have preferred Debian but using Testing (as suggested by the dev) doesn't some ideal.
aruggirello•Feb 7, 2026
Debian Testing isn't really unstable - the dev wasn't exaggerating. But I'd also suggest Kubuntu (you can remove snap and all of its packages, and install Firefox and Thunderbird .deb's from the Mozilla repo)
aruggirello•Feb 7, 2026
> That is curated search done right.
Adding keywords in the relevant .desktop files should be enough to make this work in other DE's too. I just tried it in KDE (by adding a 'comment=... (like notepad)' line in ~/.local/share/applications/org.kde.kwrite.desktop), it works as expected
trinix912•Feb 7, 2026
> Fyi, in Mint if you search application for "notepad", "Text Editor" is the first result. That is curated search done right. Search for notepad on windows and you probably get an ad for a travel website.
So it was with Windows Vista, Windows 7, even Windows 8. It's not an impossible ask for Windows either.
wolvoleo•Feb 8, 2026
It's not but when you're asking Microsoft you're not asking developers. You're asking marketers who are trying to pimp stuff like bing and Copilot. What you're getting is exactly what they want you to get.
plagiarist•Feb 7, 2026
The subscription to his own machine had bugs that prevented him from using a basic windowed text editor and that isn't the last straw?
userbinator•Feb 7, 2026
To be clear, this is the horrible "new" Notepad "app" that I absolutely hated and instantly removed when it was forced upon everyone. I doubt the old "edit field in a wrapper" one which has been nearly the same since Win95 has this problem.
(My newest machine is now running Linux.)
AviationAtom•Feb 7, 2026
Markdown support and the like are useful but their need to cram AI and account sign-in into it definitely seemed over the top. When they got rid of Wordpad I kind of anticipated them trying to pivot Notepad more in that direction.
ale42•Feb 7, 2026
For what it matters, Windows Server 2025 still has the edit field in a wrapper.
userbinator•Feb 7, 2026
They all still do, just like the old Explorer context menu. It's what you get when you remove the new abomination.
chrisjj•Feb 7, 2026
Is that old still provided?
layer8•Feb 8, 2026
Yes, it’s still under C:\Windows\notepad.exe, probably for backwards compatibility.
James_K•Feb 7, 2026
The renaming of “my computer” to “this PC” was quite telling.
lousken•Feb 7, 2026
Switch to linux, don't look back
trinix912•Feb 7, 2026
Unless you work a job where you're not in control of the OS you're using, which just happens to be most of the non-dev office jobs out there. Dismissing Windows problems with "just switch to Linux bro" doesn't really help.
hagbard_c•Feb 7, 2026
If you're in a Windows-only job and you've got proof that Windows is getting in the way of doing your job you might just be able to convince those who decided to make it a Windows-only workplace to change their stance.
compass_copium•Feb 7, 2026
I have to use Windows at work and I will never have weird cloud authentication issues because I'm required to use a work-provided MS account on the computer. The author says he's a Windows guy, and always will be. This article, and these types of complaints, are really only relevant if you're using it on your personal PC.
lousken•Feb 7, 2026
I did think about personal devices, but it is a valid point, though many companies I know do support at least windows+mac if not linux. Supporting Linux desktop for a company is more difficult due to lack of anything resembling GPOs (and no ansible-pull isn't that). It is definitely a thing systemd should implement.
xigoi•Feb 7, 2026
If you’re not in control of the OS, then you’re not responsible for problems caused by the choice of OS. Tell your boss that Windows is not allowing you to use basic features and let them choke on it.
hluska•Feb 7, 2026
You don’t sound very mature.
drnick1•Feb 7, 2026
Came here to say this.
Aloha•Feb 7, 2026
I believe this is related to known issues with KB5074109
It hit Both Win11 24H2 and 25H2.
Barrin92•Feb 7, 2026
>I don't want people to switch away from Windows; I want Microsoft to treat its premier operating system like it used to.[...] and Windows 12 is ultimately an agentic AI OS, I wouldn't be surprised if more people stick with a debloated Windows 11, just as others did with Windows 10
Is there any justification for the first part other than that the authors job at windowscentral.com depends on it? Because I'm not seeing it in the article which amounts to the digital version of Stockholm syndrome. If even the author is predicting that this is what the next windows will look like, why aren't you running for the hills
AlienRobot•Feb 8, 2026
If Microsoft wanted, it could make Windows good.
On the other hand, no matter how much time or money the Linux community gets, the desktop experience will never be good.
This means that our only hope at having a good desktop OS is Microsoft changing course.
havaloc•Feb 7, 2026
I work in academia and I've gotten most of my people to switch to Macs and no, Linux is not an option here.
I have about eight Windows PCs against about sixty MacBook Airs and guess which platform causes me the most work? 1:20 issue ratio. Even simple things like SMB in Windows 11 are hopelessly broken.
leoedin•Feb 7, 2026
What makes Linux not an option? Is there specific apps you need to use? Or IT policies? Or something else?
The company I work for got bought by a big conglomerate, and I managed to stubbornly hold out using Linux for a really long time. It turns out if your workplace has adopted “Bring your own device” type policies, that often means you can auth with enough services that working on Linux is feasible.
trinix912•Feb 7, 2026
It's much harder for non-dev jobs where the management won't let you BYOD for whatever reasons, which could range from IT being too stubborn to allow you to keep company data on your own laptop that's not centrally managed, to everything including licenses for random 3rd party software the company is using being tied to the ActiveDirectory fleet of computers with centralized storage.
This is the reality of IT equipment in big parts of the non-dev world, and you'll have a hard time convincing the IT dept to take on extra hassle just for you to use Linux out of all hundreds of employees who're just fine with Windows.
Spooky23•Feb 8, 2026
The issue isn’t the technology, it’s that there’s more than one way to do everything and people tend to scratch their itches.
If you started a company today, you can immediately and cheaply hire people or an MSP to manage Windows PCs. I hire entry Windows techs for $70k. M365 E-whatever is $30-60/mo.
Apple fully aligned their products, so the guys running the iPhone fleet can run the Macs. They may need some higher level assistance to setup the configurations. Unless you have a lot of compliance work, enroll in MDM, done.
With Linux, other than Chrome, there’s no standard. You’re gonna need a smart/expensive person to setup things and you’re going to need smart/expensive people to operate. If you have compliance requirements appear, you’ll need to buy RHEL or something and rework stuff, which is more expensive than windows.
Gibbon1•Feb 7, 2026
I have a friend that worked for a big corp back 15 years ago managing Macs. At one point they told him they were going to can him and switch the Mac uses to Windows. Didn't go anywhere when he pointed out he was managing all their Mac users. And he was managing 5 times as many Macs as his coworkers were managing Window Boxes.
wishfish•Feb 7, 2026
Author implies he was using a local account at the time of the error. Which answers an important question. I'd heard of people with Microsoft accounts getting locked out of their own computers, but that's a first I've heard of basic apps failing with a local account.
Animats•Feb 7, 2026
How can Microsoft legally do that? Notepad++ is GPL-licensed open source. It's on Github.[1]
Hilariously related, the title of this topic now looks to me like "Notepad--"
Animats•Feb 7, 2026
Oops, sorry. HN condensed the title to " Microsoft account bugs locked me out of Notepad – ...", and I misread that.
keyringlight•Feb 8, 2026
And a minus-minus version is also available, which seems to be aimed at Chinese needs.
thot_experiment•Feb 7, 2026
I cannot see myself installing Windows 11, it's sad, I've been primarily a windows guy for my home computer since W95 and I'll miss it. Windows 10 (LTSC) has been the best operating system experience of my life, once I disabled updates and all the nag screens it's been rock solid for me for many years. It's so important to be able to trust that your computer works the same way tomorrow as it does today.
I hope that there's enough people like me that the combined community will keep it alive for a few years longer, but I know eventually something will force me to upgrade to Linux.
baal80spam•Feb 7, 2026
Are you me?
Well, technically from 3.1 but everything else checks out.
duxup•Feb 7, 2026
I was a windows guy for a long time. I went to macOS. Despite the complaints I've seen on the internet I've been very happy in macOS land. Someone mentioned that while macOS has "never been worse" the difference between windows and macOS "has never been greater".
Granted things like gaming might influence someone to not make that move.
htx80nerd•Feb 8, 2026
I started on Win 3.1. Win95 and 98 were so cool. Then I thought Win2k Pro was the best thing that even happened. WinXP was probably the last time I cared a lot about Windows. Vista looked cool. Then things just got worse and worse.
I have a medium-range gaming laptop running Windows 11. Dedicated GPU, extra RAM, etc. It "boots to ready" worlds slower than any of my low end Linux laptops. Windows is just so ungodly slow.
Somewhere around 2020 I changed my work laptop to use Linux only, no dual boot. MS was pushing 20GB patches, which is unreal. At the time I had AT&T DSL.
I had been using Linux on and off since the early 2000s. But the 20GB patches and 'ransom-ware' pushed me to Linux full time.
There are no apps I use that are 'windows only' so Im free. Windows is made by a mega-corp and it's just gotten out of control. "Update and shutdown" always just reboots. You can spend ~1hr doing an OS update with multiple reboots. I can install Linux + LibreOffice in ~15mins or less. A full Linux updated is like ~5min to ~10min, or less.
throw_a_grenade•Feb 7, 2026
If I had such a problem with my OS, I would have changed the distribution.
nipperkinfeet•Feb 7, 2026
Most of all, first-party apps from Microsoft have been ruined by them. Use alternatives when possible.
jasoneckert•Feb 7, 2026
Imagine if Fedora locked you out of vi because your Red Hat account had an issue.
The unsettling part of stories like this isn’t “Microsoft bad,” it’s the growing assumption that local tools should be downstream of remote identity systems. A text editor is about as offline and fundamental as software gets, yet it’s now possible for account state, sync bugs, or policy enforcement to make it inaccessible on your own machine.
This is where non-macOS UNIX and Linux systems draw the line - if it’s installed locally and you have permission, it runs. Cloud services can enhance that experience (backups, sync, collaboration) but they don’t get veto power over whether vi opens.
When that boundary erodes, we start to see our systems as thin clients, instead of full local OSes, as the author mentions.
jakub_g•Feb 7, 2026
With Macbooks Air M4 starting at $1k/€1.1k, and apparently soon some even cheaper Macbooks coming up, it's really difficult to justify buying a Windows laptop those days and having to deal with all Microsoft bs, unless you have specific needs and being locked in.
The difference of "value for money" in terms of build quality, battery life, screen, touchpad, OS stability, OS upgrades experience, and overall polish and level of user (non-)hostility is immense.
A Windows guy for two decades, got an MBP for work, and while I miss some Windows software and I don't like some Mac things (e.g. no real write-to-disk hibernation; pricey upgrades from base models etc.), but there's no way I'm going back.
smackeyacky•Feb 7, 2026
There are two technologies propped up by having to earn a living: windows and the iPhone.
No matter the android phone, trying to get your MFA experience working with the umpteen stupid MFA apps is painful because all the dev work went into the iPhone versions. I hate it but yep I ended up buying an iPhone although I never buy them new.
Windows is the other one and again it’s security related. More and more places simply rely on Active Directory/Entra and try telling the bank you’re working for that you have to have a Linux notebook. You’ll get laughed right out of a job.
I’d agree for a home computer Linux or macOS are the only sane choices now. But whatever is installed on my work provided computer is what I’m using and that’s windows.
bdavbdav•Feb 7, 2026
I use an iPhone (out of choice) but what MFA doesn’t work on android?
Quothling•Feb 8, 2026
> Entra and try telling the bank you’re working for that you have to have a Linux notebook. You’ll get laughed right out of a job.
Entra id private access will cover that (and it frankly can't become the norm soon enough). For an extra $5 per license. I wouldn't worry too much about that part of Microsoft though. They always knew how to sell stuff to enterprise. You gotta wonder what their Windows division is doing though, but maybe they just don't want private customers.
cadamsdotcom•Feb 7, 2026
Microsoft is really shooting themselves in your foot.
It might be time to look at other options.
kgwxd•Feb 7, 2026
In just about every aspect of life, the race to the bottom seems to be on the last lap, and all the players have that almost-there energy.
lconnell962•Feb 8, 2026
Comment threads on the Closed Source OS topics like this regularly remind me about the large disconnect between skilled technical users and the "average" user. That average probably isn't your (great) grandparent who never learned how to type suddenly needing to learn the rapidly evolving early-days internet, but it's still just as dangerous to suggest "Use Linux" as the solution for everyone when plenty of "Average" users still don't know enough to be doing things safely in the console.
The "sudo rm -rf" and equivilant horror stories get told all too often as mistakes even made by "skilled users" who were in a hurry, and while that particular problem is becoming less common there is still a minefield out there. Wider use case where we need IT support is worse since there are plenty of Microsoft and Mac favoring restrictions and lockdowns required in the name of corporate level security requirements and certifications add to the mess and "security concerns" you can't get corporate to move away from.
I'm a daily Linux user who has had to put years of a software developer career's time into learning the easier system administration aspects and working with those who handle the harder issues, but doing this in my career I have had to step back every time someone comes to me with a problem. Once I understand the problem then go on to ask "at a guess, how much time will diagnosing this even take?" with the estimates varying based on how standard the OS install or deployment is.
Time and a relatively small amount of training is the problem with switching users from Windows to Mac or the reverse. Switching to Linux is training and introducing a technical mindset into a person. Idiot-proofing the system is a major issue Linux hasn't solved yet. VDI systems and the like might be a step in the right direction, but as soon as your use case for Linux requires a "average user" to open a terminal the problems will pile up and the minefield is exposed.
Years removed from using a Mac I still think of it as the most "child-proofed" OS. Windows being less restrictive but still doing a good-enough job of locking up the more dangerous things while also not drawing attention to them on a regular basis. Linux is like seeing the dangers left out in the open with few useful warning signs beyond some generic unspecified danger signs around the worksite.
flomo•Feb 8, 2026
imo, the 'grandparent' type user should really be on an ipad or chromebook etc. (unless they have some specific software needs). Too easy to get unwanted stuff running on windows and it needs admin.
idatum•Feb 8, 2026
I didn't even notice the Copilot button in Notepad until it was mentioned, "Even Notepad has a Copilot button."
trvz•Feb 8, 2026
Masochism is a choice when it comes to software.
dgxyz•Feb 8, 2026
My one remaining windows machine is on 2021 LTSC and has no route to the internet. I am slowly working my way off it. This was onto macOS but that has gone down the shitter too. So it’s Debian. Hopefully be end of Q1 this year.
I honestly can’t believe what these vendors are doing. I don’t know anyone who approves of any of this.
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And this is exactly why Microsoft can get away with a buggy mess of a user hostile operating system.
They only have an incentive to make a good OS if people are willing to leave when it’s a bad one.
Hardware support is where Linux used to struggle. Nowadays things aren't perfect but much better. Basically it means you need to figure out which hardware to buy based on available support, before making the purchase.
Microsoft knows it, but they don’t care about windows. When IBM started offering Macs to employees, they figured out that the support burden was very low, significantly lower than windows, even with users having years of windows experience.
Intune was supposed to be the answer to that, making Windows management MDM like. But for their most entrenched enterprise customers, they can’t really switch without co-managing with Configuration Manager. Most of the people behind that product are laid off or otherwise attrited, as there’s no path to a subscription service.
No matter what trademark you put in the blank, this is not a healthy thing to say.
Edit: I realize now that the article author, the person in the video and the quoted tweet are all the same person, and they seem to work/run windowscentral.com, so I guess that kind of explains the motivation.
From my view it is more productive to find out what you like about something and always be open to maybe finding someone else who can deliver on that. And sometimes things that we thought were essential are not. You might even find something new to like.
The moment someone makes a non macbook air, that does the same as a macbook air in terms of being cold to touch, battery life and no-noise I'm leaving for Linux though.
I think a lot of people are waiting for a non-Apple Macbook, but we unfortunately might be waiting for a while. It seems to pain other manufacturers to not cut corners in some critical area or another…
Putting aside the debate as to the quality of desktop environments, I honestly hope you're being intentionally nonsensical as a joke. What you describe can only make sense under the grossly misinformed belief that "Linux" is a monolithic entity incentivised to stop its users from "leaving it", and that this mythical "Linux" would have the agency to decide it needed "a good desktop environment" in order to avoid that from happening.
When is Windows going to get a good desktop environment?
Windows is designed by a committee that tries to do as little as possible and has ulterior motives higher on the priority scale than UX. Like marketing copilot and other Microsoft subscription services. Microsoft software is always aimed to be just good enough for the users to not choose something better. They love just coasting on their marketshare without doing much to improve. Like they did with internet explorer and now do with office.
have you used GNOME?
If a friend stated that they will stay with their partner regardless of how deceptive or abusive said partner's behaviour becomes, you would rightly question the wisdom of that choice.
Stating that you will remain loyal to a company come what may is even worse. It's an entity with no interest in your wellbeing. It exists to extract as much money or information from you as possible.
Quite apart from everything else, such a statement eliminates the prospect of ever finding something better.
imho, user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape. There is very little focus on that. People will tell you try this or that distro. But once you run into a simple problem, it´s often a rabbit hole of a gazilling cli commands to fix it. In the mean time you´re praying to god to not brick something that used to work before.
> user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape.
It's ignorant, and its insulting, and it's stupid. You can read one or two KDE blog posts, look at the roadmap for Cosmic, look at the attention Valve has put into Linux and know that sentence is just rude. It's just so frustrating.
> People will tell you try this or that distro.
Dumbasses on reddit will. No one that has a single clue encourages distro-hopping.
There's a semi-common saying that it takes seven attempts for someone to successfully leave an abusive partner. Give him time, I guess.
Holy sh*t! I haven't had this bad a Windows install experience since Windows 95.
The first big obstacle is getting all the Secure Boot/TPM 2.0 BIOS settings right. When you don't, you simply get "Can't install Windows". No debugging information. No clarification. No details. Shades of the day of having to blindly set the I/O interrupts and addresses on Windows. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiiit, Fail. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiit, Fail. etc.
Then the second obstacle is getting a local account installed. The solution was obscure, but straightforward. Finding that solution on the glop that has become the Internet? Bleaaaaagh. Everything has to be a bloody video for something that's one stupid command. And all the AI systems aren't useful because their horizon is too old and Microslop keeps changing the command; presumably because too many people are using it (How dare they not make cloud number go up! Brrrrrrrrr!) After all was said and done, I got "lucky" because I actually bought a retail copy of Windows 11 from Best Buy--the image was "old" enough that the "old" way of doing the install still worked (Shift F10 to prompt -> OOBE\BYPASSNRO -> reboot for those who want to know)
At last, after almost 90 minutes of farting around, Windows starts to install. And install. And install. And install ... FOR HOURS! WTF IS IT DOING! The target machine is a smoking AMD desktop with SSD and a gigantic amount of pre-shortage RAM on fibre. How in the name of all that is holy and unholy do you install that slowly on that powerful a machine?
Finally, everything gets installed. And I reboot ... to no video. Oh, no, I bet it scrambled the drivers. Sure enough, I move the HDMI from my AMD card to the AMD integrated video ... yep, there it is. Sigh. Let's go get DDU and uninstall the dumbass driver that Windows Install dumped on there. Download, download, install, reboot to safe mode, clean, install proper driver, reboot. Back on my main card, now.
Finally, let's dump a recovery image because I sure don't want to have to go through this gigantic PITA again if something goes wrong. Plug in the drive, can't find it ... ah, had a Linux image that needs to be wiped out, my fault ... need the Windows partition editor, so launch and erase ... wait, why can't I edit anything? ... oh, right, dumbass, you need to launch it as Administrator ... close ... open the menu, there's the app, right click menu ...
WTF! There's no "Run as Administrator" so I can't edit the partitions! Right click a couple of other programs ... some of them have the "Run as Administrator" but some of them DON'T. And there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which is which. Curse. Swear. FINE! Plug drive into my Linux laptop, kill the partitions there, and eject. Plug into Windows ... which now sees the drive and creates a recovery disk ... happy happy joy joy <rolls eyes>.
4+ hours! Not even exaggerating. <cries>
And because I'm a glutton for punishment, I decided I'd put Linux on the old reformatted SSD. Since I used Windows for gaming about as much as Fusion 360, I figured I'd go for something Linux but gaming-optimized and snag Bazzite which I'd never used before. Download, install, login, connect to Steam, run game.
Total time: no more than 20 minutes.
No fighting about cloud login. No video card problem. Games are running fine.
Anyone still using Windows as an individual nowadays is completely and utterly daft.
I wonder if it works at all with no online connection to that store.
I wonder if it works at all when no online connection to that store.
Sometimes I prefer one machine over the other I rarely wish for anything other than sometimes being unable to transfer data between the two systems.
That's definitely a good reason to use a PC instead of a Mac, but why not run Linux on it? Then you'd get the best of both worlds.
Let's go with different, a different world.
Fyi, in Mint if you search application for "notepad", "Text Editor" is the first result. That is curated search done right. Search for notepad on windows and you probably get an ad for a travel website.
A KDE dev mentioned on a podcast that issues related to Debian Stable get closed automatically on their bug tracker because fixes don't get backported :/
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1pneqp4/kde_dev_do_n...
My wife was complaining about Windows issues so I ended up installing Fedora with KDE on her laptop. I would have preferred Debian but using Testing (as suggested by the dev) doesn't some ideal.
Adding keywords in the relevant .desktop files should be enough to make this work in other DE's too. I just tried it in KDE (by adding a 'comment=... (like notepad)' line in ~/.local/share/applications/org.kde.kwrite.desktop), it works as expected
So it was with Windows Vista, Windows 7, even Windows 8. It's not an impossible ask for Windows either.
(My newest machine is now running Linux.)
It hit Both Win11 24H2 and 25H2.
Is there any justification for the first part other than that the authors job at windowscentral.com depends on it? Because I'm not seeing it in the article which amounts to the digital version of Stockholm syndrome. If even the author is predicting that this is what the next windows will look like, why aren't you running for the hills
On the other hand, no matter how much time or money the Linux community gets, the desktop experience will never be good.
This means that our only hope at having a good desktop OS is Microsoft changing course.
I have about eight Windows PCs against about sixty MacBook Airs and guess which platform causes me the most work? 1:20 issue ratio. Even simple things like SMB in Windows 11 are hopelessly broken.
The company I work for got bought by a big conglomerate, and I managed to stubbornly hold out using Linux for a really long time. It turns out if your workplace has adopted “Bring your own device” type policies, that often means you can auth with enough services that working on Linux is feasible.
This is the reality of IT equipment in big parts of the non-dev world, and you'll have a hard time convincing the IT dept to take on extra hassle just for you to use Linux out of all hundreds of employees who're just fine with Windows.
If you started a company today, you can immediately and cheaply hire people or an MSP to manage Windows PCs. I hire entry Windows techs for $70k. M365 E-whatever is $30-60/mo.
Apple fully aligned their products, so the guys running the iPhone fleet can run the Macs. They may need some higher level assistance to setup the configurations. Unless you have a lot of compliance work, enroll in MDM, done.
With Linux, other than Chrome, there’s no standard. You’re gonna need a smart/expensive person to setup things and you’re going to need smart/expensive people to operate. If you have compliance requirements appear, you’ll need to buy RHEL or something and rework stuff, which is more expensive than windows.
[1] https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus
I hope that there's enough people like me that the combined community will keep it alive for a few years longer, but I know eventually something will force me to upgrade to Linux.
Well, technically from 3.1 but everything else checks out.
Granted things like gaming might influence someone to not make that move.
I have a medium-range gaming laptop running Windows 11. Dedicated GPU, extra RAM, etc. It "boots to ready" worlds slower than any of my low end Linux laptops. Windows is just so ungodly slow.
Somewhere around 2020 I changed my work laptop to use Linux only, no dual boot. MS was pushing 20GB patches, which is unreal. At the time I had AT&T DSL.
I had been using Linux on and off since the early 2000s. But the 20GB patches and 'ransom-ware' pushed me to Linux full time.
There are no apps I use that are 'windows only' so Im free. Windows is made by a mega-corp and it's just gotten out of control. "Update and shutdown" always just reboots. You can spend ~1hr doing an OS update with multiple reboots. I can install Linux + LibreOffice in ~15mins or less. A full Linux updated is like ~5min to ~10min, or less.
The unsettling part of stories like this isn’t “Microsoft bad,” it’s the growing assumption that local tools should be downstream of remote identity systems. A text editor is about as offline and fundamental as software gets, yet it’s now possible for account state, sync bugs, or policy enforcement to make it inaccessible on your own machine.
This is where non-macOS UNIX and Linux systems draw the line - if it’s installed locally and you have permission, it runs. Cloud services can enhance that experience (backups, sync, collaboration) but they don’t get veto power over whether vi opens.
When that boundary erodes, we start to see our systems as thin clients, instead of full local OSes, as the author mentions.
The difference of "value for money" in terms of build quality, battery life, screen, touchpad, OS stability, OS upgrades experience, and overall polish and level of user (non-)hostility is immense.
A Windows guy for two decades, got an MBP for work, and while I miss some Windows software and I don't like some Mac things (e.g. no real write-to-disk hibernation; pricey upgrades from base models etc.), but there's no way I'm going back.
No matter the android phone, trying to get your MFA experience working with the umpteen stupid MFA apps is painful because all the dev work went into the iPhone versions. I hate it but yep I ended up buying an iPhone although I never buy them new.
Windows is the other one and again it’s security related. More and more places simply rely on Active Directory/Entra and try telling the bank you’re working for that you have to have a Linux notebook. You’ll get laughed right out of a job.
I’d agree for a home computer Linux or macOS are the only sane choices now. But whatever is installed on my work provided computer is what I’m using and that’s windows.
Entra id private access will cover that (and it frankly can't become the norm soon enough). For an extra $5 per license. I wouldn't worry too much about that part of Microsoft though. They always knew how to sell stuff to enterprise. You gotta wonder what their Windows division is doing though, but maybe they just don't want private customers.
It might be time to look at other options.
The "sudo rm -rf" and equivilant horror stories get told all too often as mistakes even made by "skilled users" who were in a hurry, and while that particular problem is becoming less common there is still a minefield out there. Wider use case where we need IT support is worse since there are plenty of Microsoft and Mac favoring restrictions and lockdowns required in the name of corporate level security requirements and certifications add to the mess and "security concerns" you can't get corporate to move away from.
I'm a daily Linux user who has had to put years of a software developer career's time into learning the easier system administration aspects and working with those who handle the harder issues, but doing this in my career I have had to step back every time someone comes to me with a problem. Once I understand the problem then go on to ask "at a guess, how much time will diagnosing this even take?" with the estimates varying based on how standard the OS install or deployment is.
Time and a relatively small amount of training is the problem with switching users from Windows to Mac or the reverse. Switching to Linux is training and introducing a technical mindset into a person. Idiot-proofing the system is a major issue Linux hasn't solved yet. VDI systems and the like might be a step in the right direction, but as soon as your use case for Linux requires a "average user" to open a terminal the problems will pile up and the minefield is exposed.
Years removed from using a Mac I still think of it as the most "child-proofed" OS. Windows being less restrictive but still doing a good-enough job of locking up the more dangerous things while also not drawing attention to them on a regular basis. Linux is like seeing the dangers left out in the open with few useful warning signs beyond some generic unspecified danger signs around the worksite.
I honestly can’t believe what these vendors are doing. I don’t know anyone who approves of any of this.