A bit of a ramble, to get it out of my system. Enshittification strikes again, so, action is required.

The Windows OS was something exciting (to me), up until version 7. My first computer only had DOS 5, and as mindblowing as it was to a primary school kid, it's still only so much you can do after reading the help text for all system commands, toiling with QBasic and playing a small bunch of games. After what seemed to be a lifetime, but probably was less than a year, we got Windows 3.1. My excitement was through the roof. Paint, solitaire, minesweeper, screensaver, more games; just exploring the operating system was a joy! It felt like a virtual home. This is the first GUI I saw in my life, so that sort of stuff can burn in some pretty solid memories. Then a few years down the line came Windows 95; much more powerful, better looking, much better games, I think I used office applications for the first time then, etc. After a few years there came a rock-solid Windows 2000, followed by less-rock-solid but super popular XP. And eventually, the last good MS OS imo: Windows 7. It was an improvement over its predecessor, it was visually nice (it had colours! and icons with curves!) and worked well (I'm skipping the dud versions as you might have noticed)

IMO at that point MS started to be extra aggressive, trying to push the disaster that was Windows 8. DX11 would not work in Windows 7 (for a while at least), and if you wanted fancy game graphics, well, you have to upgrade. Windows 8 added tiles that nobody wanted, catering to a combined phone/desktop market that never was, and they remained. They started pushing software ads and bloat in the start menu. The store means they're trying to constantly sell you stuff. The store application variant vs normal applications made everything more confusing. The logo changed to flat colours and straight lines, making it uglier than ever.

Then, eventually they moved to Windows 10, the allegedly last version ever. Windows 10 was full of telemetry, still full of ads and ugliness, but at least, after some time and updates, it ended up working solidly. But apparently there was still too much freedom for users, offline accounts were possible and so on.

Then, MS managed to develop yet another super dysfunctional, sluggish and buggy operating system (11), but this time blackmailing users even harder for upgrading - it's not just DirectX anymore, it's security updates! Talk about been held hostage. Deadline was 15th of October. "Upgrade to Windows 11, Or Else!" Of course, I know there are workarounds like LTSC and 0Patch, but that's besides the point. The point is the aggressive, user-unfriendly approach of trying to monetise private user data, over-pushing AI, moving to online-only accounts while at the same time offering a product that gets worse by the year.

There's no consideration for people who want to own their devices, don't like bloat, don't like everything they do on their PC being monitored by MS. Once I got Candy Crush installed after Windows update - thanks MS for this invaluable addition! Or, MS defender hiding things from me "for my own good", and I have to jump through hoops to figure out what exactly it hid from me.

Well, personally, I'm not playing that game anymore. Over the years I dabbled a bit with Linux here and there, but it was always subpar in a few categories that mattered to me: 3D graphics stability, games, audio, some nice IDE to program in (I don't like emacs or vim). So I always abandoned it, at home at least. Until now.

My laptop now has Ubuntu w/ KDE Plasma, and my desktop has Mint/Cinnamon. They're fantastic. Still a bit rough around the edges, but most of my workflows are pretty much sorted:

  • CLion/Rider for programming
  • Godot/C# works normally
  • Kate for text editing
  • Darkroom for RAW image editing
  • Aseprite can be compiled for linux
  • GOG games play via Heroic
  • Steam games play via Steam
  • Lots of things that I forget

There are two pending workflows that are yet to be tested

  • One is the boring work stuff using MS Office and MS Teams. Might have to spin up a VM for that, as web office has been unreliable for me
  • The other is Reaper as a DAW + VST plugins. The territory is a bit wild there it seems, and still a bit raw. E.g. installing Reaper nothing works out of the box, and Spitfire samples might be problematic. I still haven't even attempted to use my guitar pedalboard.

So, that's where it stands as of now, my Windows installs have been blasted into oblivion, and one might return only in a containerised form. So, that's it folks, after 33 years that's the end of Windows for me (my personal devices at least). So long.