My computer freezes for 2-3 seconds when I try to open the volume panel and there are ads everywhere on Win 11. It's like Microsoft wants to wipe every good memory I've ever had with past Windows experiences and just accept the present.

If MacOS ever ended up like that, I'd be on desktop linux tomorrow despite the inconvenience.

I am remiss to inform you that Big Sur and-onward feels less snappy than GNOME, and has nearly as many advertisements as Windows 11. It wasn't what I wanted either, I bailed after Mojave.

I mean, I’m not going to doubt you on the snappiness as I only use Gnome on older machines, but ads? Where are the ads?

> My computer freezes for 2-3 seconds when I try to open the volume panel

You have driver issues. Improving on this problem will require further locking the OS which you may not want.

The cure is called windows 10 ltsc iot, don't care about piracy.

Across 2 machines my start menu only opens up every other time I press the start key on my keyboard.

Known bug in windows 10 for ~ 6 years, eventually fixed in windows 11.

So anyways I used to work at MSFT, I've even stepped through the Windows Kernel source on occasion (great code base) but I'm now running Linux on my home PC because the customer obsessed company I dreamed of working for one day (and ended up working at for almost a decade) is long gone.

Does your work involves using teams or ms office or docker? I personally liked fedora, but teams pwa has a lot of missing features regularly use. Office 365 can be a replacement. Docker was a nightmare to setup especially coming to root user permissions.

Yeah Microsoft stopped fixing all non-security bugs in Windows 10 after 11 came out. Of course they also find it vitally important to use Windows Update to install ads pushing their new and exciting AI services.

Even more. Using it is an exercise in masochism. Microsoft was so close of having a usable UI but they shit on all work done and started from scratch.

No, we see many of Windows 11 nuisances as something to put up with, if we want to the freedom to drive to the local PC store to have any problem sorted out, while having aquariums (which I personally hate), to compete with game consoles in capabilities.

Some of us appreciate the NeXTSTEP heritage on macOS but don't want to put up with prices, or soldered components, killing any kind of expansion.

Also many of us do have decades experience with Linux, but decided to save the time spent with Linux tinkering during our youth, by using local VMs or cloud instances.

I mean, I was a Hackintosher 10 years. It was nice to be able to stuff $2000 worth of components into a case that I found in a dumpster, but these days I deal with The “apple tax” to not have to put up with my OS treating me like a walking microtransaction.

I will agree that the ram/ssd factory upgrades are horrendously priced. Other than that, I don’t see their pricing as unfair at all.

Depends on where one in the world lives, by the way I was never found of hackintosches rather the standard expansion from LC and Quadras, that aren't a market Apple cares about any longer.

It got really awesome towards the inevitable end. If you had the right hardware, Opencore would give you a rock solid system, aside from some quirks with some apple services.

Yes.