My $0.02

I've been on Windows forever. Since DOS 3 or 4 I think (giving away my age there!) and until recently (last few years) it has fulfilled every one of my requirements, that is, games, development, consumption.

I'm a .NET developer so the Windows ecosystem was a no-brainer: Visual Studio just works... sort of. As an end-user everything works: I don't need to install drivers, hit the command line or anything.

Windows has been great over the years.

However...

The last few years have been a downward spiral. Not just downward, but accelerating downwards.

It started (for me at least!) with the forced upgrade from Windows 7 (or 8, can't remember), then came the utterly shit Windows updates - The updates for Windows 10 are shite. Plain and simple. A couple of years ago I'd had enough so I disabled Windows updates so that I could install them well after their release date as I was sick of being their beta-tester. There are literally bugs with every update now. I know we are talking about a few years ago, but I absolutely did not have issues with updates on Windows 7. Ever! Windows 10 has at least one show-stopping bug every couple of months now (it seems like that anyway).

It's now getting to the point that not only do I have less control over my own paid-for installation of Windows, but each update reduces my control ever more... I've harped on about it before (not just in this post, but others too) but disabling updates is a lesson in frustration. It's possible to do it but if you update later, they are switched back on - happens every time!

Then there's the telemetry! I'm not going to labour this point as it has been done to death already over the years but the sheer fucking arrogance of a company that takes my money, reduces my control over my paid-for product, then says "oh, we're going to take data from your operating system whether you want us to or not" is beyond the pale! Yes, yes, I know Android spying is the stuff of legend but it has been like that from day one! It's how Google makes its money. Microsoft used to not be dicks about you having control over your OS. Those days are long gone.

Dark patterns! Let me say NO to things and then just fuck off please! Why does everything have to be infantilized? Why does the YES button say "Yes please! I want rainbows and unicorns" and the NO button say "I'm a climate-denying terrorist if I click this". Worse, is when the "no" button says "maybe later" or "not right now". I hate that crap. And why do you have to make the positive button (I say positive, but I mean the button that's more beneficial to Microsoft!) massive and outlined when the other one is tiny and just text? Microsoft aren't the only ones that do that... I need to point that out!

The need for the OS to constantly keep me informed, or tell me about X, or jump in my face with this thing, or show me the latest news tipped me over the edge.

I want my operating system to do the following:

1. Store and launch my software

2. Be secure

3. Stay out of my way!

That's it.

I've had a few goes at Ubuntu and found it lacking. Nothing major but a few annoying things related to hardware: sound popping, graphics glitching, FF crashing, printer stopping working. Stuff like that but I'm on Pop! OS now. Just installed 20.04 the other day after playing with 20.10 for a couple of weeks (not a fan of 21.04 and I like the LTS idea especially when my livelihood depends on said computer!).

I can still programme .NET stuff with Rider (getting the hang of it, it's quite nice and it is way more responsive than VS which has become a buggy nightmare over the years!). Docker allows me to run SQL server (still use that quite a lot) and, interestingly the Docker SQL image runs faster than SQL server when it was installed natively on my Windows box... weird! It's very noticeable too.

Anyway, I'm too old to fight with the OS any more, and POP! seems to be ticking all the right boxes for now. I have to keep a W10 VM around for a couple of things but it's off most of the day.

Edit: I had a go at the "leaked" version of Windows 11 and I wasn't enamored. As a friend of mine once said: "Same shite, different smell!"