I draw one big circle shape line around it to keep it contained.

My red line is when the user experience becomes worse for me on Windows than on Linux. Not saying that Linux is bad, it’s definitely not, but it seems to use a completely different paradigm from Windows which is much less aligned with what I want out of an OS than Windows is. So fundamentally my user experience on Windows is better, the enshittification is just adding trade offs until they eventually outweight having to go with a paradigm I don’t agree with. And that point hasn’t been reached yet. Though we’re definitely getting close.

I wish there was an actual alternative that was just an opensource Windows without enshittification. I’d switch to that immediately if it existed. But with Linux, Windows will have to do some more enshittifying to get me there.

At work I’m paid for it. The software is very much specialised and while probably possible to run under Linux it’s just too much of a headache.

I did install Linux on our SVN server though.

If I am forced to use Windows 11, then I will begrudgingly do so (my workplace has a PC with Windows 11 installed and it’s so manky). The only other place where I tolerate it is on my Xbox Series S (which might be replaced completely with a Steam Machine). The only reason why I tolerate it on my Xbox is because installing a distro would be difficult and not have any significant payoff as most distros are meant for full on PCs. With Microsoft growing to become the shittiest they can become, I am beginning to not be able to stomach the notion of even having a Microsoft account. I will deadass throw away hundreds of dollars of investment in Xbox if it means being free of Microsoft in my daily life.

Otherwise, I use Linux, have it installed on every computer that I can, also make use of Android and Open Source tools when needed in order to avoid any of their products whenever possible. I am currently transitioning as many accounts out of Outlook as possible. For the time when I choose the nuclear option.

It’s tied to my job, so I’ll stop using Windows when I stop working there.

I use windows because the fire code mandates it, and cause having sunlight in rooms is nice. Also I can see the weather and when the mail arrives.

Unfortunately with the way you asked, and especially with asking on Lemmy, you’ll get a lot of tech saavy people, and FOSS enthusiasts. You’ll also get a handful of people here who can’t help but talk down to anyone who dares to say that Windows isn’t just the fucking worst.

I’m primarily Windows, with an Ubuntu VM for working with obscure FOSS utilities (like I had to use someone’s college project to recover data off a USB HDD where the enclosure broke, and it turned out the manufacturer used whole disk encryption so you couldn’t just shuck it and go, but it was thankfully trivial with the key stored in a specific sector) and to work with github projects that only provide build instructions for Linux.

I run a personally customized and debloated install of Windows 10 Pro on my desktop, and Windows 10 Ameliorated (someone else’s debloat setup I cribbed a decent amount from) on a laptop that is mostly used as a remote endpoint for the desktop through sunlight/moonlight (whatever the open source version of nVidia streaming is). The debloating took maybe 4 hours (6 if you include the time to figure out how to stream updates and drivers into the install media) and I’ve had no issues with any of the shit people complain about. I’m in control of my own updates (although you can’t delay them indefinitely, you can push them back multiple weeks and prevent auto-restarts), no onedrive, stripped out telemetry shit and blocked through host file and DNS in case any was missed or added later. No updates have reset any settings I’ve set, despite the common insistence that everyone says they do.

But I also have almost a decade in supporting Windows, from intro IT help desk to many years as a sysadmin and IT infrastructure “engineer”. I know what levers Microsoft has built for businesses to use to kill the bullshit, anf I cry at just how ridiculously bad a shit ton of Windows advice online is.

As far as Linux goes, I’m no stranger to it, and have been poking around with it since Knoppix was one of the only options (if not the only) for live-boot. I’m the go to guy on my team for the few Linux based appliances we run that don’t belong to the network team. I want it to be a competitive alternative for corporatized software.

But I bounced off it in the mid-late 00’s as I got tired of how much tinkering it took. By the time I was interested in checking it out again, I was working in IT, and nothing drains you of energy to tinker with computers at home like doing it eight hours a day for work. I wanted my stuff at home to just work, to the point that I even was mostly gaming on console.

I’m out of my burnout now, built a new desktop when I got my sysadmin/infra position, and built up a homelab of VMs to try (and fail to) speedrun studying for the MCSE before MS stopped offering it, since I work in a primarily Windows environment.

Whenever I finally get some free time, I plan to sit down and document customizing Win11 to not suck for the sake of all the people online that insist it simply isn’t possible at all… and to set aside a dedicated drive to try out some more modern Linux distros again.

But I’ll be honest, most Linux troubleshooting stuff still seems to be pretty finicky and still a tradeoff compared to the amount of stuff that “just works” on Windows (nVidia GPUs, HDR, VRR for a few examples). Definitely far better than it used to be, but still not to the point where the OS just gets out of your way. Windows still seems to be able to get to that point more easily.

I hope to proven wrong in my opinions about the current state of things.

I used Windows 10 for a while. But now I’ve completely moved to various flavors of Linux. I’ll get GrapheneOS or something on a phone if possible later.

Only place I still have windows 11 is my work PC. Nearly all the main annoying crap is managed away by IT, and it’s still irritating as hell.

I stopped using Windows on my own machines many years ago. It was probably about the time when the games I was playing ran well enough, so dual booting was just taking up space I could use.

I drew the line at Windows 10. It was bad enough. 11 was a bridge too far. I basically quit 4 months ago and wiped my last Windows machine today. I just made a post about it!

For anyone on the fence, do it!

Why anyone is OK with Microsoft’s key logging of everything including passwords is beyond me.

I was building myself a new computer from scratch and I had a friend whose laptop I would borrow on occasion that had win 11 on it.

Knowing how bad win11 was and knowing I’d have to pay yet another $100+ to be graced with the garbage on my system, I decided to partition an old laptop and play around on mint for a minute. The rest, they say, is history.

I drew the line when my Windows box told me I couldn’t do something even with admin. Kid, you work for ME, not the other way around.

Always preferred Linux over Windows, but I had issues with games on it. I just decided that I wouldn’t play any games that didn’t work. That was a couple of years ago now, and things have only improved since.

My fiance, who is not a technical person, even decided she wanted her new PC to run Linux unprompted, which is a hell of a win for Linux and for me in not having to support a Windows box in the house.

The line is between my home and the office. Linux at home for nearly twenty years and windows at work because so few know better.

I’ve no reason whatsoever to run Windows, even in a VM.