In the process of migrating my 20+ years of data to Linux. Have been running it off a different disk for a year now.

My biggest concern was gaming but Steam really makes it work seamlessly. Lutrix/GOG is not as seamless but works well enough. Could be better but it works and the crap coming into Windows just pushed the final nail into the coffin. Will be retiring Windows forever in the next month.

Same. I've always been one to say that I like Windows and it never gave me trouble (apart from Windows ME), but I can't take this enshittification any more. I can't remember when the last time was I opened up the start menu and started typing something and reliably got the App I wanted and knew is installed (since I used it dozens of times already).

Gaming, which was always why Windows had to be installed on my desktop, has gotten quite stale lately so my Steam Deck and Anbernic devices have been a blast playing through some nostalgic retro games.

It's also quite interesting how stable and uneventful my time (almost 2 years now) with Linux Mint has been. I remember the time when I couldn't wait for new Windows versions to come out. Now? I never want a new one to ever come out again in favor of stability and predictability.

I've had very good results running my GoG library through the Heroic game launcher.

Thanks! Will give it a try.

I did this two years ago and had a similar experience. This was on a custom desktop PC.

Windows doesnt play well with dual boot, so I had to literally detach the SATA cable to keep it from eating my GRUB bootloader partition.

I switched to using the System76 distribution Pop! OS, which bakes in GPU drivers (among other things). I used the rust-based Cosmic desktop, but that choice is a different discussion.

On Linux, I was able to run almost every single Windows game well on a Nvidia 3060.

Storage was easy, pretty much everything supports FAT reads at a bare minimum, NTFS is possible with the FUSE drivers that are package-installable.

Development was easy, multimonitor was easy, suspend was a little wonky on my hardware, sleep was great.

Bluetooth ended up taking some serious wrangling for usb devices, about that point is when cli chops come in handy. Wifi was natural if a bit clunky UI-side.

All that said, they're still in early days, YMMV.

The investors are in charge. You will enjoy the telemetry and hamfisted AI that is Windows 11 because well no one uses Windows because they want to.

Windows 11 suffices for my needs. Ubuntu on WSL is a bonus.

Hasn't Microsoft done the exact same thing half a decade or so ago with windows 7?

I can't really feel sorry for windows users sorry. They have known the Microsoft rules for decades, has plenty of years to switch to other OS/vendors and decided to stick with it.

This is the first Windows upgrade I'm aware of that has a hardware requirement, because it needs TPM 2.0, which isn't included on all computer hardware. I would have upgraded by now but I literally can't without upgrading my hardware first. And my hardware is still in great shape and still very powerful (I'm still playing the latest games on my computer, often with high settings still), there's no reason for me to replace it except to let me get Windows 11, which is a crappy reason.

> Seriously, who's in charge here anymore? Shouldn't users get to decide what software they are running on their own computers?

You make it seem like this wasn't intentional. This came from the top and I expect there were a lot of people in the implementation path that did not like it. It's a feature not a bug.

I left Windows a long, long time ago. But, I will say that I think Microsoft is following Apple more here. Apple supports (with bug/security fixes) the last 3 major releases. Yeah, you can run an unsupported macOS forever (without ads for the newer one), but they don't go as far back as Microsoft ever did.

They should probably stop following Apple then. What makes sense for Apple doesn’t necessarily make sense for Microsoft and vice versa because they’re different companies.

I don’t even like Windows but definitely a solid advantage for customers was if Microsoft put out a release you didn’t want, you skipped it and maybe got the next one and that would be the signal to Microsoft “oh, damn, customers didn’t like this one”. Now it just reeks of desperation trying to force all their customers to upgrade to a release they don’t want, even if it is free.

> But, I will say that I think Microsoft is following Apple more here.

Oh, yes. It's bad that the two biggest desktop OS vendors seem to be working in lock-step against user choice. Apple always seems to do it first, then Microsoft copies it in a more extreme, yet hamfisted way.

Apple also nags you to upgrade the OS, but they do it subtly, in a notification that is annoying but not that intrusive and it's dismissible. Microsoft barrels in and says "Hey, I wanna do that too!" but instead throws up trashy full-screen popups and "warnings" to the user (as if the user is a naughty puppy).

Apple really wants you to have an Apple ID, too, and has various subtle ways of reminding you just how much of a sad person you are for not having one. Microsoft then comes barreling in with "Hahah! We're going to FORCE you get a Microsoft ID, and require you to use it to log in to your own PC! Howbout that!?"

Well, exactly that. I was a Mac user, enforced by my employer at the time, and I did not quite like it but was ok with it. Would never pay for it, with the high price, though.

I use (soon to be used) Windows on my home PC since Windows 95. I really liked Windows 7. The free upgrade to Windows 10 was... underwhelming, to say the least. Windows 11 is ten times worse. So, yeah, the year of the Linux desktop arrived for me because Windows is now complete crap.

> Yeah, you can run an unsupported macOS forever (without ads for the newer one)

Not if you want to do anything other than email and web.

Xcode and all the supporting utilities deprecate pretty fast. It doesn't take very long before your old Xcode can't be used to sign or install anything.

Yeah, Xcode has been the biggest driver of me upgrading my Macbook. Even still I managed to put it off for 8 years, but that's because I took a break from Xcode for several years.

At least nice of them to start more than a year before, give time to advertise Win 10 Ltsc for those not wanting to switch (support should be until 2027).

Microsoft have consistently pushed the idea that they own your computer, and are merely leasing it to you, for decades.

I seriously think this behavior is going to hurt MS in the long run. Even the least tech savvy people I know are starting to mumble about not owning anything anymore.