I have met people freaking out about windows 10 coming to end of life. I've heard that Windows 11 is worse. It makes sense. Every other windows sucks. Each half decent windows version is a cleaned up version of some mistake. XP is a cleaned up version of ME. 7 is the cleaned up version of Vista. Windows 10 is the cleaned up version of windows 8. TBH I consider windows 10 to be pretty bad. But Windows 11 is going to be / already is the crap shoot version.

Even Windows 10 is bad enough as it is. I had to shut down someone's Windows recently and it took an hour to shut down before I gave up and yanked the power. I didn't want to do that because Windows is fragile as fuck and that was a real risk. But I couldn't let an hour become four. Even on decent hardware you have to wait between many interactions. Very few things are truly instant and somethings involve real waiting. This isn't normal. You have a fucking super computer and all the system is doing is opening or closing a Window. Something that would be done as early window 3 or before. It's not doing real computation. The only way that happens is if some race condition occurred in some poorly written code and the only way out of it is some probabilistic behavior that knocks it out of it thanks to the graces of non-deterministic other bad code.

And it's like this because the whole thing is just layers built on top of a toy operating system from the 90s. No amount of money they throw at the thing and product design will ever make it good. And in fact it only gets worse and worse.

If people who do the same thing as you for free can make something that is hands down better, then there has to be some core unresolvable issue that guarantees anything you do will be bad forever. And that is exactly the case. Windows will never be good. And this is normal. Products have to rely on their foundations all the time even when it is for the worse. A reasonable position to be in. And do you know what happens when products are in that position? They die. Product and brand life cycles exist for a reason. You can't find too many A&W burgers. You can't buy a commodore, or an Amiga. The OS that's build atop a standards breaking consumer OS from the 90s should die.

It's weird that your OS has advertisements in it. It's weird that it's slow. It's weird that it locks you out of things for the profit motive of a corporation. It's weird that you need more hardware to do the same thing instead of software improving and being more efficient. In theory if software was improving you would be able to use less hardware over time. It's weird that your OS attempts to force you into the cloud instead of just giving you all the options and trying to make all options a good experience.

This is the case for Linux. The community is constantly adding new optimization to already very efficient code. There are no restrictions. There are no sudden corporate changes in strategy that impact what you can do with your files. Everything is as fast as you are. A computer should be faster than you, not slower. It's to the point that it is more user friendly than Windows.

There is an intersection point in time that must happen. If Linux keeps getting better and better and more user friendly. And Windows keeps sucking worse and worse and getting more restrictive with time. And AI improves and increases your ability to fill minor gaps in understanding. Then Linux being the smarter choice is an eventual inevitability.

I hate to tell you this but it has already happened. Solidly it has already happened.

There is better gaming on Linux. Linux can run office 365 if you really want that. Linux has 98% excel clones like FreeOffice/OnlyOffice/Gnumeric. You don't even need to use LibreOffice. It's not spying on you. You can install any AI integration you want and have more options. And critically you can rip that thing out when you want to. It's easier and faster to install than Windows.

And with AI any few remaining difficulties that you might experience due to in-familiarity, can be handled super quickly because AI knows Linux very very well. If anyone is still on Windows it is time to quit.

Also you can duel boot it, so it's not like you are erasing anything. Just go for it. The second you don't know what you are doing just ask AI. Many people figured it out long before AI. It's not rocket surgery.

Start here:
Disc image -> https://iso.artixlinux.org/iso/artix-xfce-openrc-20250407-x86_64.iso
Writes the disc image to a spare USB -> https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/releases/download/v4.11/rufus-4.11.exe

Reboot your computer with the USB in. Once in click the install icon on the desktop. Pick options that make sense. Ask AI if you need help with anything.

Once you have that installed just ask me or anyone else questions and we'll help you do the remaining 50% of getting a good system.

Absolutely no one with a brain should be running Windows. Bro, your operating system has advertisements in it. WTF. Remember that Windows started in the 90s trying to be a personal business computer plus optional gaming system. That's exactly what commodore tried to do and amiga. They wanted to be productive systems. They are more alike than you think. You are running a commodore64 system from the 90s that refused to die. It's time to get with the modern era and use a real OS.

Sorry to give such a long post. But if there is anyone here is actually running Windows still this is the time they needed to hear it before they waste money on Windows 11 and find themselves experiencing the next era of suck. You don't need to experience a new era of suck. Skip it.

Now some people will need to use Windows for work because their work wants the locked down suck. It's time to separate your work computer from your personal computer. For your personal computer use you deserve to have a good experience on a device you actually control.

AI is going to put us in a utopia and dystopia. At least reap the utopia side of it. You shouldn't be seeing advertisements on your computer if you are living in a utopia.