One of the strangest phenomena that I’ve encountered when occasionally using Windows is that sometimes there’s a problem that’s so stupid you can’t smart your way out of it. As an example: when trying out Windows 11, I made a restore point after a fresh install so that if I fucked something up I could roll back to a clean install. I then fucked something up and thought “no worries, just roll it back.” I then discovered that Windows only keeps one restore point, and manages it automatically by itself, meaning that when I fucked up, it decided to take the state of the machine immediately after I broke it and overwrite the clean restore point with the broken one and at no point asked or informed me that that’s what it was doing.
Like how do you even begin to deal with an issue like that? The only solution I know of is to pre-assume that everything actually made by Microsoft will behave in an idiotic way sooner or later, and to replace as much of it as you can with third-party solutions as quickly as possible immediately after a fresh install, but anyone new to Windows/not a tech person has absolutely no way of knowing this.
I have to regularly jump between Mac, Linux, and Windows. On Mac and Linux it’s easy to make same keystroke shortcuts work, eveninside apps.
On Windows, total crapshoot. And now, if on a newer machine, if you hit the wrong button (Copilot) because of muscle memory, you get the damn AI jump in your face.
I’ve used Linux as my “daily driver” PC and for 95%+ of my computer work since about 2012. Starting last year, my company decided to migrate the next generation of our product to Windows, and my daily driver desktop PC died, so… I figured I’d just eat the dogfood and replace it with an off the shelf Windows PC - I’m typing this on that PC now.
First place I’d diverge from the article is: most Windows users don’t install windows, ever. It comes pre-installed. They’re afraid of operations like installing an operating system, and rightly so: the Windows installer is a bit scary. I have installed Windows, mostly in virtual machines, but several “bare metal” systems too maybe 20 times over the past 10 years. It’s not impossible, but it’s certainly not as user or developer friendly as installing Linux. Particularly the part where you enter the license codes.
There’s still pain jumping between Linux and Windows, I have a colleague who goes through it regularly - trying to copy files between systems, ending up with line ending translation issues… If you stay on one side or the other it’s not an issue, but if you don’t strictly use a tool like git to move code between systems it can bite in surprising / unexpected places.
The main thing I HATE about my Windows system is how the OS periodically pegs the CPU utilization for… well, it’s unclear what it’s doing it for - it has a habit of stopping immediately when you touch it - but the fan noise is clear enough, and that’s something that you could easily configure a Linux distro to not do, Windows 11… not very cooperative in that respect.
After a year on Windows as my daily driver, I haven’t really found anything I actually like about it better than the various Linux distros. The desktop toolbar is a bit more user friendly than, say, XFCE4, but I still prefer XFCE4 on the whole to Gnome or KDE for… reasons, so… I’m not going to give a lot of kudos to Windows there. I don’t often feel stymied by Windows, I can usually get it to do whatever I want it to do that Linux can do. But, unlike 30 years ago when I used AutoCad - available only in Windows, no real Linux substitute at the time - the tools I use today are readily available on both sides.
If it weren’t for work, I’d re-image my daily driver to Debian + XFCE, but I don’t feel heavily hobbled by the current situation, and now when somebody has a “but I’m using Windows…” question I can concretely answer “I’m using Windows too… it’s not the OS, it’s something else.”
That’s called a job buddy. There’s no way I’d be using windows otherwise.
Windows 11 also has a combined emoji/symbol picker now (Super + .)
Me: “Huh, that’s neat. I wonder if KDE has anything like that.”
Me: Tries pushing (Super + .)
KDE: instantly pops up an emoji selector 🖥️
Well, I guess I learned something from reading this, so it was somewhat worthwhile.
(Now I wonder which of them introduced that first… I’m betting on KDE.)
Not really, it was actually Apple that introduced an emoji picker in 2013. The Windows one works since 2017 and KDE has it since 2020.
So I can blame apple for emoji popularization. Figures.
Windows also includes the multi character not emojis like the arms up shrug smile and table flips.
I had no idea this existed lmao
$5000 isn’t enough money to go through that hell.
I guess I get paid a lot more than that… I do it for work.
Back in Houston the badges read “HO” - the badge wearers said “we do it for money.”
I don’t count a decades-old cumbersome wizard-style interface with countless steps to go through just to unpack a compressed file to be even remotely acceptable in 2026. Dolphin and Nautilus handle compressed files entirely transparently and much faster than Explorer does, and once you’re used to that, going back to ’90s style compressed file management almost feels insulting.
My dad has trouble differentiating between webapp and software. You think handling a archive as a directory is a smart idea there? Dialogue or right-click menu is fine, which 7-zip adds. Thing is a file, should be handled as a file (launches something).
Let’s say, it should be customizable.
And i think explorer does transparently open zip since a few years? Wasn’t that a big feature in 10 already? Or was that only a tweaker tools fault?
Webapps are not software
Windows Explorer opens a zip like a folder, Nautilus extracts it but has no feedback that it does so. You just have to notice. If you have another extractor installed then it will open in that program.
Opening a zip file with nautilus looks like this btw
The window you see behind the zip file one is how nautilus look like for normal foldersSo it handles zip files by itself, but opens them in a separate window with separate look? Why bundle them then?
So you can send multiple files as a single file I guess.
I think zip files working like folders is pretty ideal and we aren’t going far enough with it yet.
Technically it’s a pop-up. You cannot use the window behind when that’s open. If you try to carry the pop-up, it will also carry the main window.
Pretty sure this is a separate program? Mine just unpacks them.
edit: found it https://flathub.org/en/apps/org.gnome.FileRoller
Did gnome come pre-installed with the distro? I installed gnome on a fresh VM with debian (without any DE) so maybe the distro mantainer removef FileRoller or smth Or it could be a mandela effect and i installed it when i made the VM 2 months ago
When people comment about having issues with Linux, this is what that should be compared with.
Or not, since linux distros ideally shouldn’t be bound to windows. (but realistically they are)
20 years ago, fixing easy stuff in Linux was a matter of Google searching, finding it, then copy pasting what you needed to do from the browser into a terminal.
Since the beginning, the difference between a problem in Windows and a problem in Linux is that the problem in Windows can (and often does) hit a dead end - proprietary wall, it’s broke and you just have to live with it. In Linux (more generally: free open source software) it may be broke, but the fix is always possible, if you’re willing to put in the necessary work.
With AI reducing the effort necessary to do this kind of work, rather dramatically, I expect Linux and FOSS in general to be getting a bit of a boost. Not taking over the world, 2030 still won’t be the year of the Linux desktop, but… the ability to scratch all the itches is more valuable today than it was a year ago.
I used to fairly frequently hit dead ends on Linux, e.g. regarding Wifi drivers or getting some (Linux) applications running. But the driver situation has improved greatly, and thanks to Flatpak, Distrobox & co. I’ve only ever run into one application I couldn’t install - a corporate antivirus. Whoopsie!
As a Windows user that was an interesting read. For some reason I thought Windows was catering to Americans whilst Linux was being the international all rounder.
How would an operating system even cater to a country? Is there a distinctly American way to access files
You yell at it for being a tar and not a zip
Completely unconcerned that other operating systems might be using the hard drive and just fucks them up without a thought.
Bloat and running fans nonstop. Every other language pack needs to be added post install.
Super Sized.
In system requirements perhaps
(lack of/lacking) internatiolisation and localisation.
You do notice that a lot of software is made with Americans in mind and Linux/FOSS is no exception. But there’s worse like notion for example.
When you look at the way windows handles i18n, it’s fair to say it caters to the US market.
Microsoft has tried all kinds of things, in all kinds of markets, to maximize their income. One of the more nefarious:
Windows ANSI code pages closely match—but are not identical to—ISO-8859 character sets. Microsoft intentionally modified them to fill “blank” control character slots with symbols like curly quotes and currency signs.
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Qbittorrent just shows the window when you left click it. Scroll click does nothing and right click shows a menu. V5.23
Not for me, but maybe that’s a XFCE or settings thing.
Ah. It could be. I’m on Plasma.
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I’m not surprised that laptop had issues. It’s purpose built and likely has sub 1% usage across the windows install worldwide.
Not supporting a 3+ year old Intel wifi chipset out of the box is kind of wild though, that’s a super standard part.
I replaced an NVMe drive on a Windows 11 machine the other day. Cloned to new disk, booted up. After posting and entering the bootloaders, it said “BOOT DRIVE INACCESSIBLE”. The drive needed a driver to BOOT once Windows took over.
A Western Digital 850x black 2TB. This is not an uncommon drive, but I had to patch in the driver to the disk from a live CD.
I don’t see how people put up with this crap.
I buy a lot of Dell refurb laptops to use in cheap timing setups for rfid chip timing. Recently they had to start selling some without an OS because they literally are stuffing anything they can find into them and Windows refuses to install without drivers.
Microsoft doesn’t do it the way Linux does it. Linux supports the Chip(set) and as long as different vendors “connect” them the standard way Linux just talks to these components directly in a standardized way. Microsoft wants drivers for that specific board/hardware revision. Even if it’s just a standard chip, every vendor needs to provide a driver.
Keep in mind windows users don’t install their os from scratch. The OEM will include those in their deployment.
windows users don’t install their os from scratch
And, at this point, they’re being actively discouraged from doing so.
I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the future, Windows doesn’t even offer an installer of any kind … or at least feature-locks the ability to install it yourself to ‘professional’ editions that cost more.
No they aren’t.
You can get your original install media from the OEM.
Including a bunch of drivers and software adds more to an already large installation. I downloaded the latest iso the other day and it was over 6gb in size.
There honestly might be licensing implications that they are avoiding by not including software and drivers, something open source doesn’t need to worry about too much.
The last Linux install I performed had similar issues with the video card driver.