You paid me, a long-time Linux user, to use Windows 11 exclusively for a month

https://www.osnews.com/story/145459/you-paid-me-a-long-time-linux-user-to-use-windows-11-exclusively-for-a-month-heres-how-it-went/

by speckx • 13 days ago

38 15 13 days ago

osnews.com

jqpabc123• 13 days ago

1 month is too short for a realistic assessment.

A lot of differences only manifest themselves over time.

For example, what happens during an OS upgrade and how do the systems compare.

aezart• 13 days ago

This part confused me:

lacks basic features like dealing with compressed files – 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.

I can open a zip in a normal file explorer window just fine. Maybe this is something stripped from European versions for anti-monopoly reasons?

Anyway here's what I've done with my Win11 install to make it tolerable:

- Disable onedrive

- Make a secondary local admin account and use that exclusively instead of the the main Microsoft account one (since the library paths in the main account all have onedrive in them even if it's disabled)

- Disable web search in the start menu with group policies

- Remove task view, widgets, the search bar, etc. from the task bar

- Put the start menu in list view and remove every pinned item

- Left-align the taskbar

- Show file extensions in explorer

I'm sure there's a lot more I had to do, but I don't remember off the top of my head.

cliglot• 13 days ago

I can open a zip in a normal file explorer window just fine.

I was even under the impression they added support in explorer for extracting other types of archives (tar, maybe 7zip).

Tsiklon• 13 days ago

Partly, windows defender can open and scan the contents of many archives, but extraction of several popular formats isn’t possible

TheSeeker11• 13 days ago

They did. One can compress natively to TAR and 7z.

tracker12• 9 days ago

7z was added to Win11 as well as .zip ... noticed it on my assigned work computer.

xerox13ster• 13 days ago

The actual extraction is done with a wizard. Sure you can navigate in and out of the file, but if you want it to all come out, you need to right click and extract all which brings up a wizard with multiple steps.

On Linux in the file explorers, there is a right click context menu that just dumps them into a folder or not right there, no wizard, no extra pop-ups or anything.

If you want that experience on windows, you have to download 7zip or winrar and navigate to a nested context menu item.

Windows _is_ stuck in the 90s on this.

Bratmon• 13 days ago

You can also just copy the files you want to move in the archive view and paste them where you want them.

Or you can click and drag the files from the archive to where you want to move them.

Funnily enough, it's really only Linux users and people who used computers in the early 00s that don't think to move files in archives the same way they would move files that aren't in archives.

TowerTall• 12 days ago

Raymond Chen on "Why is Windows Compressed Folders (Zip folders) support stuck at the turn of the century?"

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180515-00/?p=98...

dlcarrier• 13 days ago

XFCE's Thunar doesn't natively handle compressed files, but I much prefer it to the bloat that is Dolphin. I'm surprised someone found a way to complain about Windows not being bloated enough.

RetroTechie• 13 days ago

Different GUI toolkits look & feel is more or less unavoidable if you want backwards compatibility for 3rd party apps (and on Linux, one could read "3rd party" as "anything built on a different UI toolkit than the default desktop environment"). But Thom's conclusion:

"Whenever I experienced a short stretch of time where I felt “perhaps this isn’t so bad?”, one (or multiple) of the problems and issues described above would snap me out of it. For someone used to desktop Linux, where respect for the user, consistency, customisability, and performance are still held in high regard, Windows 11 feels like an endless string of punches in the face."

That's just pathetic for a multi-$B company with >200k employees. At least an OS's built-in apps should be functional, performant, easy to use, and get out of the way of users getting work done.

But that's not even the worst. The worst is that MS clearly doesn't care. MS only seems to care about slurping user's data, pushing unwanted crap (ads, AI features nobody asked for etc), and making sure Windows comes pre-installed on as many computing devices as possible. End users be damned.

If MS would care, then 30y+ of refinement, MS's resources, and Moore's law could have turned Windows into the smoothest, fastest, easiest to use OS on the planet. But alas.. here we are in a different timeline.

thewileyone• 13 days ago

As a long-time Windows user, from 3.11 onwards, sometime Macbook owner and a Linux tinkerer on spare devices, Windows 11 is a step backwards in UI with all it's inconsistencies and forceful but poor implementation of new features. Linux, the distros I've tinkered with, seems to be more polished and consistent across the board.

Only reason I still use Windows is AAA games and MS SQL Server, which I prefer using SSMS to control.

tracker12• 9 days ago

Funny, I've gotten into using the VS Code extensions a lot.. I liked the Azure SQL Manager or whatever it was called based on Code as well... I do wish the Microsoft Extensions for SQL were more in line with other database managers though.

That said, it's nice to use SQL from code directly in projects. Also, if you're on x86_64, you can always use SQL via Docker pretty easily if you aren't using the more advanced features. That said, I have a Windows Server VM expressly for testing MS-SQL.. I need to finish my ODBC based driver for Deno/Bun/Node (supporting FileStream).

You paid me, a long-time Linux user, to use Windows 11 exclusively for a month

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