Windows is a lot slower than linux, and poses significant hardware requirements. Many people will have to / already have replaced their system in order to be able to run Windows 11. (Windows 11 doesn't even support first gen Ryzen CPUs.)

Linux usually supports hardware for a very long time.

Since (for whatever reason) Microsoft hasn't figured out how to make its store actually useable, Windows users have to download (most of) their apps via the browser. That's not just a lot of effort, it also vastly increases the amount of adware/malware non-technical people download and install.

On linux, installing apps is a breeze; the stores are actually good.

Disk encryption hasn't been an option on (non-pro) Windows until very recently. This means someone who steals your laptop has access to all the data stored on the device.

Linux supported disk encryption since forever.

I could go on. Windows is lacking in various ways.

The only benefit Windows enjoys is being the most used operating system. It is therefore more likely that you're already familiar with Windows and that that specific app you want to use or your employer wants you to use runs only on Windows. (Most notably: Adobe Software, MS Office Software, Video Games.)

The core benefit of using Windows is not even a part of Windows.

Heres a few:

* The UI is slow (compared to linux/gnome and osx).

* There are ads in it.

* There is a lot of unnecessary telemetry.

* Viruses, malware.

* No good first-party packaging solution.

* Real linux > WSL.

* I could go on.

* (some?) LLMs run better on Linux than Windows - some people report a 50% improvement in tokens/sec.

Newest item to add to your list:

* Recall

A lot of that is nonsense. Only the ads and telemetry are issues, recent issues at that.

- The UI is emphatically not slow and is faster than the most popular DEs,

- Viruses and malware have not really been an issue in a decade and Windows has significantly better security than Linux at the moment,

- The Microsoft store is a first party packaging solution frequently used

- Real Windows > WINE

There are problems and issues to be sure, but technically it's actually very sound.

The Windows 11 UI is slow. The Settings app in particular is stupid slow.

I use it on my "corporate job" PC because our architecture is based on .NET and we are still forced to adopt it (at least until we'll definitely pass to .NET Core becoming a bit more agnostic). All I can say is that it's... overwhemingly slow... and it gets progressively slower while times goes on. Every time I install something new that I need it occupies more RAM and I'm forced to control it periodically opening the task manager and killing tray bar processes. People can say "well you could be more careful while installing stuff" but the point is that I am. Moreover the majority of times I need stuff I let the corporate sysadmins to install it on my machine. Options to avoid programs being invasive are hidden, you need to search everywhere to understand how to, let's say, avoid Microsoft Teams to load on OS boot. Someone should explain to me how it's possible that my forklift notebook is a T450 with a 9 years old 15W TDP i5 CPU with Arch Linux installed, and Firefox opens in 2 seconds, and my corporate PC is a fucking stove with a 45W i7 recent CPU and Firefox needs at least 10 seconds to open. And if I, a self-considered kind-of-technical dude, have issues in keeping a work computer clean (so without any game or "casual" program installed), imagine what happens to my less-skilled friend who likes games and needs cracked Photoshop: he will inexorably seek for help from me after things go progressively bad. It happened few months ago with a friend. I took his old T450 (another one) I made him buy to have a PC (now it's my second debian server). Now he has a second-hand MacBook and he's never been so happy. Can't be sure that MacOS actually works better because I avoid it too, but at least people are happy and (I assume) tries to solve their eventual problems alone.

Why can’t you use Rider? Are you on .NET Framework?

Yes our platform is developed on .NET Framework, adopts Microsoft SQL-server and it's deployed on IIS servers. These are old company choices related to legacy support for some customers that we (the "new" generation developers) are slowly pushing away with the help of system administrators. But till then I need to have a copy of the architecture on my laptop for debug/test. Of course things could be improved i.e. with a Windows Server VM into a linux PC, but with colleagues we try to keep stuff on our machines as much similar as possible to avoid conflicts.

That's unfortunate for 2024, doubly so as you can have .NET 8 ASP.NET Core application that would launch for local dev loop using Kestrel, but then get deployed and plug into IIS with ANCM, I did run at some point into the fact that as the time goes on, the ecosystem diverges further and more packages that used to target .NET FW become unmaintained requiring more rewrite work.

VFAT patent enforcement was sufficient to declare a permanent personal vendetta against MS.

Needless to say MS did half dozen such things during the 00s.

So basically irrelevant reasons in 2024.

Yes, that dog there did bite your brother and sister and cousin and neighbour but that is months ago so basically irrelevant reasons in 2024. Go on, give it a hug.

Right. Becuase Apple has never, gasp, done anything anti-competitive or shot down open standards.

What does Apple have to do with this? Also why not mention Google, or Samsung, or Huawei or any other supplier of something which resembles an operating environment?

The article is about Linux so it's assumed the alternative to whatever Microsoft tries to push is found there, not at the Fruit Factory or the Googleplex or the CCP.

Read the original comment I replied to. It's relevant because they mentioned Windows, macOS, and Linux but swear not to use Windows. And people often blindly bash Windows and Microsoft when macOS and Apple are 10x worse, which was my most recent point.

What your point here exactly?

They are both shit companies who peddle shit and anyone with half a brain would be wise to steer clear.

Oh god, Windows is a maintenance nightmare!

Every time I'd speak to some relative, the conversation would invariably turn to "Can you do something about my computer? It's so slow!"

And then I'd go take a look and find it riddled with spyware and bloatware and a thousand million processes running in the background that actively try to undermine uninstalling this garbage. I mean, why the hell does a MOUSE DRIVER require 2GB of space??? And the virus scanners - these are the worst offenders of all!

Linux is a smaller market with fewer threat actors. It's not being pushed into an advertising platform. It runs everything that 90% of computer users want. I can trust most distributions to keep things light and snappy.

It's just no contest when it comes to non-tech-savvy people. Linux makes it all so much better once you get it going. I wouldn't install it on someone's laptop, though (unless the laptop was specifically designed for it). If they want a laptop, macbook.