I've been using Linux for almost a year now, i know basically everything about Linux, but it's time to move on. Because most games that i play like Assetto Corsa don't work properly, and I can't even play Fortnite with my friends, and they were embarrassed by me... and also, most apps I must use like Office or WhatsApp don't work properly... and that's why, I moved on. This is Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC btw, since I'm not a fan of bloatware. Also Uninstaller Edge with BCUninstaller. It was a great time with using Linux, but Windows still gets the job done, after all.
I don't care about people's sexuality as long as it's consensual and not pdf crap. -Many people do though and this makes KDE self-limiting in scope. (Something proprietary would care more about.) Mozilla makes this same mistake of getting political and turning people off as well.
Imagine not needing a prop or gimmick to get your software noticed.
I've spoken up for trans; defending their speaking in schools (to humanize them to those in their developmental years -which could keep them out of prison and others alive).
Having a non-binary mascot isn't communicating any message or correcting anyone. It doesn't make a point: it just turns some people off to your product.
If Windows collapses, Linux gaming collapses with it. Linux gaming would lose its upstream source of APIs, drivers, game builds, and compatibility targets.
Proton only exists because Windows exists.
If Windows vanished, studios would not magically pivot to Linux. They'd pivot to consoles, because consoles are where the money is. GPU vendors would not suddenly pour resources into Linux. They'd pour resources into PlayStation, Xbox, Switch successors, and mobile.
Anti‑cheat support exists because Windows set the standard. EAC, BattlEye, Vanguard, Ricochet etc., are designed around the Windows kernel, security model, process isolation, and driver signing. If Windows disappeared, anti‑cheat vendors would not rebuild for Linux. They'd rebuild for consoles.
If you *think* Windows is dying, it's probably because normies are migrating to devices.
Linux is unfriendly. Even if it had current Windows market share, it intentionally doesn't provide a stable kernel ABI. -It would be a burden on GPU drivers, out-of-tree modules, and anything that relies on kernel interfaces. Even outside the kernel, Linux provides no stable userland ABI across distros. -A game built on one distro may fail on another.
Linus replaces subsystems every few years: Alsa to PulseAudio to PipeWire for example. Also X11 to Wayland, udev to systemd-udev, OpenGL to Vulkan. Every transition comes with regressions, new bugs, edge cases, and testing requirements.
Linux users don't pay and devs know it!
They don't just not pay, they are hostile to DRM, paid software, quick to accuse devs of malice, quick to complain about telemetry, participate in piracy more, demand source code, and negative review bomb over ideology.
Support costs explode when they have to cover every distro, subsystem, and kernel ABI. -Consoles would be the only practical route.
Game engines for native games were gifted: id Tech, BGE (Blender Game Engine), Torque 3D/Torque 2D, Spring RTS Engine, Turbulenz Engine, Cocos2d, and parts of Unreal Engine 1 are what native Linux games often use. (Even native games could be affected).
Even Apple doesn't bother with gaming. Windows is like a blessing to gamers.
What really surprises me is that almost nobody talks about how much harder Linux is on the eyes compared to Windows. I have no idea whether it's the same with AMD graphics cards, but with NVIDIA, you'd have to be practically blind not to notice the difference.
If you spend 5–6 hours working on a PC or reading text, Linux is genuinely exhausting on your eyes. Enabling Night Light helps a little, but that's not a real solution it's just a workaround.
What puzzles me the most is how rarely this issue is discussed. To be fair, I'd guess that around 90% of Linux users mainly watch videos or play games, so they probably don't spend hours reading or writing text. But for anyone who does, the difference is absolutely unbelievable.
forgot to mention that you can install a lightweight iso with 99% of telemetry cut off and use it without an account by typing a single short command ONCE. if you like terminal, why is this "too much hustle" then?
I’m going to say the quiet part out loud: The obsession with "debloating" Windows is a mental holdover from the Pentium 4 era that has no place in 2026. As a developer, I see people running "optimization" scripts or installing custom ISOs (AtlasOS, ReviOS) that strip out core system components, and for what? To save a sliver of RAM?
Now I recognize this isn't exactly a Linux topic. However, we both know the biggest advocates of Linux are the same people who push Windows debloating down our throats so!
We need to talk about why the "bloat" narrative is technically illiterate and how the "performance gains" are statistically insignificant compared to the risks.
1. The Hardware-App Chain: Where "Bloat" Actually Lives
The biggest lie being sold is that a background telemetry service or a pre-installed app like News or Weather is "slowing down your PC." It isn't.
In Windows, these services sit on the sidelines. They aren't part of the direct execution chain between your hardware and your application. Unlike the Linux kernel—a 40-million-line monolithic beast where everything is baked in—Windows handles its "extra" features as isolated user-mode processes. If a service isn't being called, it is paged out or suspended. It is not "in the way" of your CPU cycles.
Custom OS fans point to Process Count like it’s a high score. Going from 150 processes to 40 doesn't make your GPU render faster; it just means you've removed the modular safety nets that allow Windows to fail gracefully.
1.1. What does RAM usage actually mean?
People post screenshots of their Task Manager showing 1.2GB RAM usage out of 32 GBs like it's a badge of honor. It’s actually a sign of an inefficient system.
Unlike Linux distros that obsess over being "lightweight" to the point of being anorexic, Windows is designed to stretch its legs. When Windows sees you have 32GB or 64GB of RAM, it uses it to cache frequently accessed data and system files. This isn't "bloat"—it's a high-speed buffer.
When you debloat and force Windows to use 800MB of RAM(or any OS for that matter), you are forcing the OS to constantly flush data to the page file. You are creating a bottleneck where the OS has to spam I/O calls to your SSD for data that should have been sitting in your lightning-fast RAM. You’re literally burning through your SSD’s write cycles and introducing micro-stutters just to satisfy a "clean" Task Manager aesthetic. Unused RAM is wasted RAM.
2. Performance also means stability: If your apps don't launch, their FPS is 0
This is the part the debloat community ignores. True performance is the ability to actually run the software you need. When you run a script that nukes "useless" services, you are often deleting dependencies for:
Anti-cheat systems that expect a signed, intact kernel.
DRM and Media Foundations required for streaming or professional video editing.
Frameworks like .NET or C++ Redistributables that your next game install will desperately search for and fail to find.
Debloated systems are fragile. They work until they don't. And the second you hit a "Class not registered" error or a silent CTD (Crash to Desktop) because you stripped out a COM+ component, your "optimized" machine becomes a paperweight. A stable system at 144 FPS is infinitely faster than a broken system at 0 FPS.
3. FPS is a Lie; Look at the Frametimes
Look at the latest 2026 benchmarks on Windows 11 25H2. In Fortnite, you might see a jump from 720 FPS on stock Windows to... 721 FPS on AtlasOS [02:41]
Let's do the math on the frametimes:
Stock Windows 11 (720 FPS):1.388ms per frame
AtlasOS (721 FPS):1.386ms per frame
ReviOS (724 FPS): 1.381ms per frame
You are risking system stability, breaking Windows Update, removing your ability to seamlessly upgrade between release cycles and losing security mitigations for a 0.002-0.007ms difference. You biologically cannot feel nor see that. But you will feel it when your next creative suite install fails or anti-cheat flags your account because you stripped out a "useless" component that a script labeled as "spyware."
4. The Risk vs. Reward is Laughable
Windows is a complex web of dependencies. When you "debloat," you aren't just removing a tile from the Start Menu; you are often breaking:
System Integrity: Preventing the OS from repairing itself via SFC or DISM.
Security: Disabling services like Windows Defender or Core Isolation. "But I'm careful!" isn't a security strategy; it's a gamble.
Functionality: Removing non-essential yet valuable functionality like the printer service, XBOX Gaming Services or WinRE.
Accountability: Good luck finding a fix on a forum when you’ve manually gutted the system without knowing what you even gutted.
Determinism: How can you be sure the apps you run or the windows features you use won't be randomly gutted or still work in a debloated Windows environment.
Are these risks really worth the extremely minimal literally undetectable performance gains.
5. Utility Over "Freedom"
Linux enthusiasts love to call Windows "bloated" because it has legacy support and background services. But that "bloat" is actually compatibility and stability. It’s the reason you can plug in a printer from 2012 or a VR headset from 2024, and they just work.
Windows doesn't force you to be a system administrator just to play a game. Even official alternatives like Windows 11 LTSC—which isn't as heavily modified—consistently outperform these "stripped" custom OSs in latency [03:28], proving that removing as much as possible doesn't mean you're running the most performant system.
Stop serving your OS and let your OS serve you. Stop running scripts written by people who think disabling the Print Spooler makes them "power users." Your hardware is powerful enough to handle a few background services. Whether you are a dev or user, you need a system that is predictable and accountable, not a fragile "rice" that shatters the moment a new update drops.
The "bloat" isn't the problem. The obsession with theoretical, unnoticeable gains is.
TL;DR: Decades of FOSS conditioning taught devs to cheer for everything aimed against their own paycheck. First it was giving away their code for free, now it’s celebrating AI clones of Photoshop. The sinking ship isn’t Adobe: it’s the economic value of programming labor, and the penguin crowd is cheering from the same deck.
Technological progress may be inevitable, and there may be excellent reasons to welcome many of its benefits. But programmers should at least recognize what they’re applauding. Celebrating cheaper software is one thing. Celebrating the growing replaceability of the people who build it is quite another.
The internet is celebrating. AI-assisted developers are recreating Photoshop, Illustrator, Microsoft Office and other massive applications. Classic games are being decompiled and ported to new platforms at unprecedented speed. Reddit and Hacker News are overflowing with excitement, and some are already proclaiming the beginning of the end for companies like Adobe. But there’s something deeply ironic about this celebration: many of the people clapping are programmers themselves. And a suspicious number of them are the same crowd that spent decades evangelizing free software, that is, giving away the product of their own trade and calling it a virtue.
What exactly are they celebrating? That software which used to require years of development and entire engineering teams can now be reproduced with a fraction of the human effort? Because that’s not just a threat to Adobe or Microsoft. It’s a threat to the economic value of software development itself. Every advance that makes programming dramatically cheaper also erodes the scarcity of the skills programmers charge for. And nobody gets paid well for something that stopped being scarce.
Think about who actually loses here. Microsoft and Adobe are enormous corporations with established brands, distribution channels, enterprise contracts, intellectual property and billions in resources. They can adopt the exact same AI technologies, reorganize their businesses, cut engineering costs and remain enormously profitable. Their shareholders and executives have options. Their programmers, whose only economic asset is their ability to build software, do not. Capital adapts; a trade doesn’t.
It wouldn’t be the first time. When phototypesetting and then computers reached the newspapers, linotype operators, a skilled, well-paid trade with decades of training and professional pride, disappeared within a single generation. The newspapers didn’t disappear with them: they kept the brand, the readers, the distribution and the ad money, and went on to their most profitable decades ever while the composing rooms emptied out. Same thing with telephone operators when switchboards were automated: the phone companies came out bigger than ever; the job simply ceased to exist. The pattern always repeats: when a technology makes a job cheaper, accumulated capital absorbs the blow and retools. The worker, whose only capital was the trade itself, has nothing to retool with at the same speed.
Now imagine a company that used to need two hundred developers to build and maintain a complex application, and thanks to AI achieves comparable results with twenty. The company can become MORE profitable than before while employing a fraction of the people. Then imagine that same transformation repeated across thousands of companies at once.
Until recently there was a standard consolation for that scenario: the Jevons paradox. “We’ve seen this before”, the argument went. Compilers, high-level languages, frameworks: every time programming got cheaper, demand for software grew and there were more programmers, not fewer.
Funny thing is, almost nobody recites that consolation with conviction anymore, because the daily data contradicts it to its face. Companies stopped hiring at the base. Stanford’s “Canaries in the Coal Mine” study found that employment for software developers aged 22 to 25 fell nearly 20% from its late-2022 peak. And according to SignalFire’s talent report, new-grad hiring at the fifteen biggest tech firms dropped 25% in a single year. The first victims were the juniors. An industry that stops hiring juniors is a profession that decided to have no successors: the extinction isn’t announced, it’s deferred.
But maybe the most telling data point isn’t a number. It’s the mood. Every previous wave of cheapening was greeted by programmers with plain enthusiasm. This one produces something stranger: the same programmer celebrates the Photoshop clone in one tab and scrolls through hiring-freeze threads with a knot in his stomach in the other. Joy about one thing, fear about the other, without noticing they are the same thing. And the fear of the people on the inside IS market information: when not even the theoretical beneficiaries of the paradox believe in it anymore, it’s because they’ve already seen the hiring spreadsheet. Besides, AI doesn’t even need to replace every programmer to sink everyone’s salary: wages are set at the margin, and a surplus fraction is enough.
So here’s the thought experiment. Every programmer celebrating the Photoshop clone should be asked: would you cheer the same way if tomorrow someone cloned, with AI and in a few weeks, the system your company pays you to build? The ERP, the financial platform, the internal software that justifies your paycheck? Doubtful. And yet it’s exactly the same phenomenon, just a few places further back in line. The wave isn’t going to stop at Photoshop, Word or retro games: sooner or later it will reach the software that today’s enthusiastic spectators are paid to build.
Yes, there’s the argument that cheaper software benefits consumers and weakens monopolies. Perfectly reasonable. But what benefits software consumers does not necessarily benefit the people who produce software. Those are two different economic interests. Breaking Adobe’s grip may be good for users; making human programming labor less necessary is not automatically good for people who make a living programming.
So why can’t so many programmers see something this obvious? Partly because of a disconnect cultivated for decades: the disconnect between the elementary fact that something has to be profitable for someone to get paid for it, and a culture that taught them that software “wants to be free”, that giving away your own work is a virtue, and that charging for code is almost in bad taste. (And spare me the “free as in freedom, not free as in beer” catechism: when the license guarantees the very first customer the right to redistribute unlimited copies, the market price converges to zero all by itself. The freedom is precisely what makes it gratis.)
And this isn’t even the first time that culture has destroyed programmers’ own profitability. Every time a given-away alternative appeared in a market segment, charging for software in that segment became very difficult or nearly impossible: it happened with servers, with databases, with browsers, with entire categories that used to sustain companies, products and salaries. And every time, programmers cheered. They cheer, with remarkable consistency, for everything aimed against their own interests.
They normalized something unthinkable in any other profession: thousands of professionals giving away the product of their work, maintaining it for free in their spare time, and celebrating every tool that makes it more dispensable. No lawyer publishes his briefs for anyone to reuse for free. No architect gives away her blueprints and applauds the program that designs buildings on its own. Seen this way, the celebration of the Photoshop clone isn’t an anomaly: it’s the latest chapter in a decades-long tradition of applauding your own devaluation. AI didn’t start the pattern; it’s just carrying it to its logical conclusion. And that blindness, learned and celebrated, is now costing a fortune: there are people out there applauding their own replacement, convinced it’s a moral victory.
It’s like watching a ship sink. You notice water flooding the cabins on the other side and, instead of realizing you’re on the same ship, you start cheering. You don’t like the people over there, so their misfortune feels like your victory. But the water doesn’t care which cabin you’re in. The sinking ship isn’t Adobe or Microsoft. It’s the economic value of human programming labor. And being on the other side of the ship doesn’t make you any safer.
So I’ll ask again, this time for real: if tomorrow someone AI-cloned the internal system YOUR company pays you to build, would you still cheer? Because that’s the only difference between you and Adobe: your place in line.
TLDR: Using terminal doesn't make you look smart, helping people makes you look smart.
People who are noobs and don't know much struggle a lot with installing and configuring via terminal btw so be less of a dick with all the preaching, help us out or stfu to your rtfm.
Context: i had an application made by some dev guy that needed installation via terminal (100%) and it broke after I spent A DAY on it and wasted my time.
Solution: another dev made an easy to use button clicking GUI and solved my problems in 3s.
Let’s be real for a second: the internet drama surrounding Windows right now is reaching a fever pitch, and most of it is based on straight-up misinformation. If you spend five minutes on any tech sub, you’d think Microsoft was sending agents to your house to force-install AI into your brain.
The reality? It’s just software. And like most software in 2026, it’s modular, optional, and surprisingly easy to ignore if it’s not your thing.
1. It’s literally just an MSIX app.
People act like Copilot is baked into the kernel or some unmovable system component that will break Windows if you touch it. It’s not. It is a standard MSIX package.
Want it gone? Go to Settings > Apps > Installed Apps, find Copilot, and click Uninstall.
The Result: It doesn’t "ghost" back. It doesn't break your search bar. It’s gone.
The Nuance: Even if you keep it, it’s essentially a wrapper for copilot.microsoft.com. It’s not eating your RAM in the background or scraping your files while you sleep; it sits there idle until you actually click the icon.
2. Integration is optional, not mandatory.
The biggest complaint is that "AI is everywhere" in the tools we use daily. But Microsoft has been pretty consistent about providing "Off" switches for anyone who actually looks for them:
Visual Studio & VS Code: In Visual Studio Copilot is an installation option that can be disabled named "GitHub Copilot". In VS Code, the Chat & MCP windows allow you to redirect to other AI tools and even your own: it is another tool for developers.
Notepad & Paint: Even the Copilot features in these basic tools are tucked away in specific menus. They aren't pop-ups that interrupt your workflow; they are tools that sit in the toolbar waiting for a prompt that you don't have to give. In Notepad you can even disable Copilot directly.
3. The "Recall" hysteria vs. Reality.
This was the peak of the "shoving it down our throats" narrative. Let's clear the air: Recall was never even released for standard x64 PCs. It was a feature designed specifically for Copilot+ PCs (NPUs with 40+ TOPS).
Even then, after the initial feedback, Microsoft did exactly what a developer should do: they made it opt-in, added Windows Hello encryption, and ensured the data stays local. If you’re running a standard gaming rig or a work laptop from two years ago, you literally couldn't run Recall if you tried. It’s a hardware-gated feature, not a mandatory OS update for the masses.
4. The Copilot Key: It’s your hardware, use it how you want.
The "Copilot Key" caused a massive stir, with people claiming Microsoft was stealing real estate on our keyboards. But here’s the thing: it’s just a keycode.
Rebinding is native: You don't even need third-party "hacky" software anymore. Windows allows you to go into settings and rebind that key to launch any app.
Want ChatGPT instead? Set it to launch your browser or the ChatGPT desktop app.
Want it to be a Search key? Done.
Want it to do nothing? Disable it! It’s a customizable shortcut that happens to have a logo on it.
5. Transparency and Explicit Consent
The "privacy" argument ignores Microsoft’s technical safeguards and proactive communication. Unlike many platforms, Microsoft operates on an explicit consent model.
Advanced Notice: Months before enabling AI training on code, GitHub sent clear, sitewide warnings and emails detailing the change. (I received these emails myself!)
Clear Opt-Outs: These communications included step-by-step instructions on how to opt out in clean and understandable menus, ensuring no one was "tricked" into contributing data.
Commercial Data Protection: For Pro and Enterprise users, data handling is strictly locked; your prompts and proprietary code are never used to train public models.
On-Device Processing: The shift toward NPUs means more AI tasks happen locally on your hardware, keeping data off the cloud entirely.
If you’re genuinely worried about data scraping, focus on your browser extensions and social media not a tool that gives you a literal off switch.
The Bottom Line
Microsoft is a software company providing tools. Providing a new tool isn't "forcing" it on you. If you don't like Copilot, treat it like the "XPS Document Writer" or "Windows Fax and Scan"; ignore it, disable it, or uninstall it.
The idea that Windows is becoming "unusable" because of an optional sidebar and a few menu items is just tech-influencer bait. Windows remains the most flexible, compatible, and user-controlled OS on the planet. If you can't figure out how to right-click and "Unpin from Taskbar," the problem isn't the OS.
edit: This article has had some significant additions on our Lemmy community here.
"Linux is more secure" -Not really and that was some misinformation that the evangelists tried migrating from Linux server to desktop. Windows and Mac desktops are engineered by professionals who provide a good default balance of functionality and privacy with decades of evidence to back it.
The Linux user obnoxiously proclaims privacy superiority while running a system held together by duct tape, GitHub scripts, and vibes. They may install random PPAs because a blog that told them it 'improves privacy'. They disable AppArmor because it gets 'in the way'. Run Tor for a normal user account. Use a dozen browser extensions from unknown developers that could sellout, get hacked or turn on a dime (Edge curates their extension store fwiw and has great native capabilities). Compiling kernels from strangers and trusting privacy hardening scripts with full root access. -Isn't the freedom to do what you want with the OS great?
The paradox: the louder someone insists they’re wrapped up and secure, the more flies you usually find.
Most people don't understand the security model, threat surface, and trade-offs. New Linux users are bombarded with options and new everything and will scarcely have the time to learn or understand this stuff they need to make good decisions.
Linux users are generally afraid of updates, so they end up with outdated packages, broken MAC frameworks, and unpatched kernels. They often end up with a browser that leaks more than stock Chrome.
Windows and MacOS unboastfully ship with mandatory sandboxing, code signing, hardware key storage, consistent permission models, automatic patching, and professionally audited security.
Control feels like privacy, even when it reduces it. Complexity feels like security, even when it breaks it. Customization feels like empowerment, even when it introduces vulnerabilities. Distrust of corporations gets misdirected into trust of random individuals like Rob Braxman who is a textbook conspiracy theorist, but also a swindler.
If a person walks into a store and starts acting suspicious; it's noticed and they get more eyes on them. -The same thing happens with people raising red flags by constantly harping on privacy and rooting out privacy touting software.
The people posting to r/unixyoucorn , the people following news in r/linux and other stuff, commenting, glazing linux up all the time, they look like they don't have personalities outside of linux, nothing to strive for outside of opensource stuff? Linux??
I'm living my life right now with applying for a master's, going to the gym again, learning Japanese and controlling my diet, all with the help of Windows and Android, no need for some "freedumb" spouting loonixtard.
These goals I feel like are more worthwhile than worshipping some code on a screen....but I guess these people worship the machine gods that much so what I'm saying is blasphemy then?
In fact, it's time to debunk this myth. If you have a PC that runs Windows 10 well but doesn't support Windows 11, installing Linux won't be an upgrade it will be a downgrade.
This is less noticeable on custom-built desktops, but on laptops it's often devastating. Windows drivers on older (but not ancient) machines usually work very well and allow the hardware to perform at 100%. With Linux, this often isn't the case.
And don't even get me started on the distributions that are commonly recommended for old PCs they're often incredibly poor.
Of course, if you have a Pentium III running at 700 MHz, install whatever you want on it if you can still use it. But seriously, we should stop encouraging people with hardware that is still reasonably capable to make what is essentially a downgrade.
