it’s really crazy to think that someone thought this would be a good idea, and then convinced the whole company to put it in practice

Such a bad move/idea from Microsoft. Not sure what they were thinking.

In theory I have a legal copy of Windows 11 on USB drive that I have bought together with my PC. In practice I’m not using it at all. Because of performance and privacy mess it’s not worth to use it. When needed I just open an MS Office in a VM just for few minutes, but now I wonder what I would do. It’s too dangerous to launch Windows anymore.

They have enabled it by default with a possibility to change it’s settings. How nice of them! On Gentoo I have just 1495 packages - if I would need to configure each one because BY DEFAULT they are dangerous for my personal and business data then I would consider changing job and not using PC at all as it’s easier to do. Now think that in theory Windows supports backwards compatibility which in practice does not work, but hey - they are another apps that were installed. I guess Windows therefore would have dozens if not hundreds of thousands of “packages”. That’s how Windows become another NO-GO zone.

I wonder how much craps Windows have that they “forgot to mention”. When using Linux I can at least verify what packages I’m installing and using. On Windows I have no idea what’s inside system files. Windows so far had lots of problems:

1. Many useful features came after 20 years comparing to much better alternatives on other OS - that was an amazing source for memes
2. Tons of parts and services that slows down PC and not doing anything needed for a user’s use case were mixed with system making them hard to remove if it was even possible. The best example was IE that was not only browser, but was used as a part of the system and you was able to remove it partially or you could broke everything even if you not need it at all.
3. Other apps enabled by default that also affected privacy and performance.
4. Backwards compatibility that worked best on … Linux using wine

This way for most people Windows become an OS only for games, but when literally one feature by default takes 10% of disc space it’s not worth anymore. Just think that a typical user knows and understands all the settings and performance tricks on Windows. They just want to “make it work” and with such practices as long as they would not use things that work only for Windows then it would be worth to change OS for a typical user.

Why? Just think how much time takes typical Linux distribution installation … just a few minutes. How long is to work with Windows mess? For me it’s long hours. Maybe some companies would have a scripts to automatically disable/remove that and do hundreds of other things, but the question is … is it worth anymore? Learning about Linux that you have full control of with a descriptive error messages if something fails should be much easier than “somehow” solving Windows problems. Not sure how it’s working now, but I still remember errors with a weird hex code without any context. Since almost nobody remembers it people needs to Google each such problem.

You know what’s worst? Who would be really damaged? People who knows “a few things” that are willing to install OS on themselves. What’s a problem? A so-called “Gaming Editions” of Windows. Yeah, this OS is bad in terms of performance that many people are searching for a ways to fix it.

Who cares if they would be viruses. My game would have more than few FPS!

You think I’m going too far and nobody would say that? I already heard things like:

They can spy as much as they want. I have nothing to hide!

Most of people don’t understand the security problems and just click Next. Windows really became a SCAM software just like the installers that “by default” added other apps or toolbars and had “somewhere” an option to prevent it. How did worked? Brilliantly - at least for IT service shops. They had tons of requests to remove 3 and more toolbars that covered significant space on their screens.

The funniest thing is that the often practice to fix many problems was a Windows reinstall and copy user data as that was faster and easier to automate than manually searching and fixing each problem. In worst case huge percent of people could be extremely vulnerable, breaking every NDA agreements, paying again and again for a reinstallation service.