The reason is simple … money. Microsoft did not become a trillion dollar company selling Windows. Removing local accounts, TPM chip associated with your Microsoft ID, embedded AI with access to your data that you can’t remove, forced updates … allows Microsoft to control your computer and collect your data that they can monetize. You are no longer the customer, you’re the product.
The OS is just a tool, so picking macOS, Linux, Windows is all about fitting your needs (like picking a car/suv/pickup). Each are fine choices; the idea one is superior to another across millions of users needs, technical knowledge, use case and device capabilities is unrealistic in my mind. Be glad you have a choice, and not locked into a single option.
My opinion is that an OS isn’t even really a tool. It’s a standard for other tools (the programs you want to use). It’s more like the toolbox, I suppose. A way to access your tools.
Win 11 is the end of the road for me. Setting up a new laptop was once a relaxing familiar task, like gardening or tuning up an old car. Win 11 makes it a cruel exercise in futility. My i7 rig with 64Gb of RAM will likely retire as a Linux Bitcoin node when I move to Mac.
Took an entire weekend of tweaking to set up my local user account without creating an MS Outlook account that gives Microsoft control over all apps and settings. MS user support (🤣) falsely leads users to assume that such an account is mandatory.
I have fond memories of the earlier days of Linux when you installed a distro. Let's say Red Hat installs great but Ethernet doesn't work. No problem! Just go to the library or Borders and figure the problem out! Or get a new computer to do research about your broken computer, because it isn't like you'll be learning anything on a Nokia. Or dual boot back and forth, schlepping your new driver attempts to the new partition.
Now it's more that you type the problem into your phone and you can resolve the issue in under a half hour, if not ten minutes. Not only will the solution be in your grasp, it will be transparent: you'll know the files that are being overwritten. Just about anything you want to run will work well, and you only need to spend about 30 minutes or so to find out if it will if you have doubts. So it's a great time to run Linux now. People are transitioning and they aren't stressing about it anymore.
Windows is such amazing garbage at this point, I’ve finally switched over to entirely Linux machines for everything except phone, which I’ll certainly replace with a non-iOS device when it breaks. Such as possible Librem 5, still looking at options. I’d like something physically hardened and satellite capable.
If I didn't have to use Windows 11 for work then I would go all in on Linux (with which I am more than passingly familiar) or just get a gaming Chromebook. Now that Steam can run on Chromebooks, I am running out of reasons to play in Microshaft's playground.
Back when I was young and stupid, I used to shit on Apple/Mac and quietly defend Windows for a simple reason. Apple was the hipster obssessed with showing everyone how cool they are while Windows is the boring but reliable thing that focuses on doing what people use personal computers for.
The tables have turned, it had been for quite some time. Now Mac's the boring option (I've been using one for at least 10 years at this point) while PC tries so hard to show you how cool it is.
I still use XP64 as my daily driver. (I'm posting from it. Current browsers for XP exist, and the "security concerns" are vastly overblown.) It has better visual configurability (more than just alternating dead black and glare white, like all "modern" OSs, including most of linux) and it fails to regularly annoy me. I loathe MacOS's whole way of being, so it's not an option. The program I depend on and can't replace (my writing software!!) runs on anything from 95 on, but looks like shit on Win11, so here I am.
I do use Win11 (however, I don't use OneDrive, at all) mostly for graphics stuff and when I need LibreOffice (old versions have too many issues) and once beaten into submission, it's pretty decent. Between purely local account, OpenShell, and Winaero Tweaker (to properly adjust system fonts and disable all the crap) I can get it to a usable state where it doesn't make my eyes bleed. But I'd hate to be stuck with it for everyday.
However, I live in the file manager, and having that in various ways annoying or broken (here largely imitating linux, where the file managers and system search uniformly suck) has torn out much of my hair. I have not found a 3rd party file manager that is both 100% stable (I've had all of them crash, dealbreaker) and actually works in the simple straightforward way that Windows File Manager used to. On linux, XFE is the least crap, and it can't see network drives. Dolphin... well, I got used to it, but I don't like it.
I found Win7 insufficiently stable (it's the fancy desktop stuff; Server2008R2 is completely stable, but has shit performance), and Win10 too ugly, and that propelled renewed experimentation with linux (first experience was RedHat6 in 1997, then Mandrake, so I'm not cherry here.) Which finally achieved "good enough for everyday desktop use" 7-8 years ago, and there, only the KDE desktop is sufficiently complete and mature. All the rest have functionality gaps, or operate in some paradigm I dislike (Gnome makes Win10 look good. If I wanted a cellphone for my desktop, I'd use a cellphone.) And which distro is under the DE makes a huge difference. PCLinuxOS is super fast and had been super-stable, and I've been using it for 8 years, but it's a one-man-band and presently in flux due to the necessary transition to KDE6 and Wayland (sorry, X has always sucked) and away from APT kinda all at once. OpenMandriva is almost as slick, until you go to update it, and it breaks. Fedora (my next choice) is a hog and needs a lot more hardware under it, but utterly mainstream, therefore more predictable. The less said about Ubuntu the better.
I have a PC set up as a Chromebook, just because. (When you collect computers, you can waste a few... I also have a Hackintosh, just because.) Horrible as a desktop experience, unless your needs are very narrow. Again, I DO NOT WANT A CELLPHONE as my desktop!
So, yeah. "Modernization" of the desktop has spewed broken stuff all over, yet for most of us there's too much friction elsewhere. And mark my words, the next major change in Windows will be to OS by subscription. This has been Microsoft's wet dream since the Win2K launch (I was there, and with my own ears heard them wax poetic about this very goal) and between ubiquitous fast internet and the TPM chip allowing disk encryption for all, this goal is now achievable. Software vendors get a more predictable cashflow, business gets cost leveling and can offload all the liablity to the software vendor, and consumer-level users (that's us) get screwed. But all the money is in enterprise business (which includes OEMs like HP and Dell who preinstall the OS). Home users are not revenue, we are a support cost, and Microsoft would rather we all went away and stopped bothering them.
And with Woke presently infesting much of linux, and the Cult of Rust breaking existing software (eg. CoreUtils on Ubuntu), that's actually becoming a less viable escape route.
So my solution is XP64 (with support for massive RAM that base XP lacks) for everyday, so I don't have to reach through the monitor and force-choke a UI developer. Linux to mostly fill in the modern gaps. And I will be preserving a stable version of Win11 for the graphics apps that need it (which I've been slowly collecting, Humble Bundle makes it cheap). Virtual machines sometimes (hilariously, I have a Win8.1 VM that runs on XP64... and still gets updates!!) but they're not a good everyday solution, and neither is WINE. And no, I don't want AI shoveled in everywhere. In Notepad? seriously??
So this is where I'll be, because I don't like the software future I see very much.
"We are living in the future, I'll tell you how I know
I read it in the papers, fifteen years ago.
We're all driving rocketships, and talking with our minds
And wearing turquoise jewelry, and standing in soup lines.
It's sort of a weird thing to say that Linux installation needs to get smoother. Back in 2011 when I switched permanently, it took less than 10 minutes to install Ubuntu. Things have improved since.
And when I installed Debian 8 OR 9 (I have a stack of hard drives and a hotswap bay, so I have one of everything installed) the damn thing took four hours, and had to be babysat the whole time. Some of 'em still take half an hour. PCLinuxOS takes five minutes. Fact is linux is all over the map.
Weird…I’ve installed at least a half-dozen other distros and maybe the longest running ones were Raspbian, mostly because SD cards are quite slow. I have no idea why simply having hard drives would make an install process slow down in any way unless you were installing different partitions of the root system across the lot, which is a strange thing to do and very manual. Maybe LFS would take that long, because you have to build the kernel. Or old-school Arch from 10 years ago.
I don't know what Debian's trip was. I just followed the prompts, and...
More recently I went to upgrade Debian 10 to 11, and it refused.
It's just "in the stack in case I need it" not actually used, so I said fine, I'll do a clean install of 11 or 12, whatever was current by then. Imagine my surprise when it preserved my existing setup. It did take quite a while, but not like the first time.
My Fedora install (which I actually use) goes all the way back to F32, and it's never given me these problems... tho Discover never finishes updates, so that's always done at the terminal. I've still got the same command in the buffer from 6 years ago, so it's just up-arrow, yes, very complicated. :)
There is now constant friction when using the OS. If I want to save a document, I have to click several extra times, opening a whole new UI element, just to save it to Google Drive or a specific place on my drives (which is necessary now).
I turned off my cloud drive, and save everything to my desktop, then create folders for what I need.
True, my desktop is cluttered, but I know where everything is.
I disabled the update months ago, and keep booting it down the line every 5 weeks.
Yes! The friction. I have to open several separate dialogue boxes to save a document where I want. It’s a little thing, but it adds up, especially when there was less friction before.
I already posted this comment on your YouTube video, but I'll post it here as well, in case anyone here finds it useful.
I had heard a lot of bad word of mouth about Windows 11, and even watched a video from a former Microsoft coder who explained some of the problems with it, so I have always been intent on avoiding ever using it. I'm currently running Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC, which will still be supported by Microsoft until 2032. The reason for this is that the Enterprise version of Windows is what large corporations who buy Windows computers in bulk for their employees use. Microsoft knew that discontinuing support for the Enterprise version of Windows at the same time as for everyone else would cause a lot of trouble for a lot of companies, so they have given Windows 10 Enterprise an extra 7 years of support. That may be only a temporary reprieve, but hopefully by 2032 there will either be a better alternative available or Microsoft will have caved to pressure to either drastically improve Windows 11 or start supporting all versions of Windows 10 again.
My computer originally came with Windows 10 Pro, but I used a free script from Bladez1992 at GitHub called LTSConvert to convert it to Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC a few months ago. It doesn't cost anything to do, and it's very easy if you follow the instructions from the Github page. All of my Windows settings and files were left intact, and Windows actually seems to run smoother than it did before, probably because the Enterprise version of Windows is more free of bloat because it's designed for corporate use. It has all of the same features as Windows 10 Pro except for the Snipping Tool, which I personally miss a little but most people never use.
If it's at all possible for you, I would recommend installing Windows 10 on your computer, then using LTSConvert to convert it to the Enterprise version.
I've actually found Win11 overall better than 10, especially on limited hardware. Fewer issues, more coherent. But (just like Win10) it does require a good beating to make it behave. I apply OpenShell and Winaero Tweaker (to disable all the bloat) and in five minutes I have a usable desktop. Also, using a local account makes most of the really annoying crap just ... disappear.
Mind you, my daily driver is still XP64, so that should tell you what I regard as "usable".
And that I do not give a flip about "support".
Tho threats of support ending... well. I have various Windows for various purposes (or just because it was already there), and...
-- Win10 continues to receive daily security-definition updates, and occasionally system updates.
-- Win8.1 last got a major system update August 2025, WTF.
-- Win7 ... imagine my astonishment when last month I had the old laptop up, and it got two shiny new security updates!
NONE of these are LTS editions. All ordinary Pro.
Meanwhile, one of the Win11 netbooks whines that it's too old and will receive no more updates. (Fine. Disabled Windows Update, stop bothering me about it.)
I think they have an automated build farm that doesn't distinguish by version, let alone EOL, so if you're logged into the "broad" channel, they keep on coming.
I'm glad that you're having a good experience with Windows 11, but personally, I would rather avoid using it, if at all possible. While I know that there are some things that can be done to tweak it to make it better and eliminate some of the issues, there are some issues with it that are very difficult, if not impossible, to fully excise. This video explains some of it:
Yeah, Rob is a total privacy freak, so he's very unhappy with Win11. And there may be good reasons for some people to avoid it. But contrary to popular opinion, Win10 had the same telemetry. So if it's privacy that's your desire, Win10 is not a sound strategy. It's actually easier to find what needs disabling in Win11, because it's not scattered all over, and stuff more-reliably stays disabled. (And updates can be disabled entirely, if you wish, with Winaero. I have not got that to work on Win10.)
The new AI can be disabled or even removed (there are tools for this), but frankly there is nothing forcing anyone to use it. Encouraging by path of least resistance, certainly, same as OneDrive does. But not mandatory.
My solution is to disable what annoys me, use a good HOSTS file, ignore the stuff I don't use, and not worry too much about it. I have spent some time observing Win11 with Wireshark, and didn't see anything obviously nefarious. (Checked because I didn't recognise the host updates were coming from.... turned out Microsoft was using Amazon's servers.)
As I note above, I believe the next major iteration of Windows will be OS by subscription, and then we'll long for the good old days of Win11. :(
I won't go to windows 11 because windows 10 has failed already in so many ways.
I can't turn off trivia on the startup screen, which makes it lag and makes me focus harder on what I sat down to do like an annoying coworker trying to bother you with what happened on a TV show you don't watch when you have an actual productive question you sat down to search.
I have to write down lines for stories on paper before I type them into a file, because it takes my computer so long to boot up, even when it's already on.
My default windows image viewer crashed all the time. And it got wonky if you needed images larger and wanted to move to another image. I've never had a problem with that since the late 90s. I had to seek out a 3rd party image browser, ImageEye. Wild. But I can't print from ImageEye, so... extra steps.
And it already couldn't search remote drives in 10. Sounds like 11 just brought that to the local box.
Give me my XP back!
The reason is simple … money. Microsoft did not become a trillion dollar company selling Windows. Removing local accounts, TPM chip associated with your Microsoft ID, embedded AI with access to your data that you can’t remove, forced updates … allows Microsoft to control your computer and collect your data that they can monetize. You are no longer the customer, you’re the product.
The OS is just a tool, so picking macOS, Linux, Windows is all about fitting your needs (like picking a car/suv/pickup). Each are fine choices; the idea one is superior to another across millions of users needs, technical knowledge, use case and device capabilities is unrealistic in my mind. Be glad you have a choice, and not locked into a single option.
My opinion is that an OS isn’t even really a tool. It’s a standard for other tools (the programs you want to use). It’s more like the toolbox, I suppose. A way to access your tools.
Win 11 is the end of the road for me. Setting up a new laptop was once a relaxing familiar task, like gardening or tuning up an old car. Win 11 makes it a cruel exercise in futility. My i7 rig with 64Gb of RAM will likely retire as a Linux Bitcoin node when I move to Mac.
4 years later my computer tells me to finish setting it up after every update with a giant dialogue box.
Took an entire weekend of tweaking to set up my local user account without creating an MS Outlook account that gives Microsoft control over all apps and settings. MS user support (🤣) falsely leads users to assume that such an account is mandatory.
I have fond memories of the earlier days of Linux when you installed a distro. Let's say Red Hat installs great but Ethernet doesn't work. No problem! Just go to the library or Borders and figure the problem out! Or get a new computer to do research about your broken computer, because it isn't like you'll be learning anything on a Nokia. Or dual boot back and forth, schlepping your new driver attempts to the new partition.
Now it's more that you type the problem into your phone and you can resolve the issue in under a half hour, if not ten minutes. Not only will the solution be in your grasp, it will be transparent: you'll know the files that are being overwritten. Just about anything you want to run will work well, and you only need to spend about 30 minutes or so to find out if it will if you have doubts. So it's a great time to run Linux now. People are transitioning and they aren't stressing about it anymore.
Windows is such amazing garbage at this point, I’ve finally switched over to entirely Linux machines for everything except phone, which I’ll certainly replace with a non-iOS device when it breaks. Such as possible Librem 5, still looking at options. I’d like something physically hardened and satellite capable.
If I didn't have to use Windows 11 for work then I would go all in on Linux (with which I am more than passingly familiar) or just get a gaming Chromebook. Now that Steam can run on Chromebooks, I am running out of reasons to play in Microshaft's playground.
Back when I was young and stupid, I used to shit on Apple/Mac and quietly defend Windows for a simple reason. Apple was the hipster obssessed with showing everyone how cool they are while Windows is the boring but reliable thing that focuses on doing what people use personal computers for.
The tables have turned, it had been for quite some time. Now Mac's the boring option (I've been using one for at least 10 years at this point) while PC tries so hard to show you how cool it is.
Microsoft has always been a lagging indicator.
I still use XP64 as my daily driver. (I'm posting from it. Current browsers for XP exist, and the "security concerns" are vastly overblown.) It has better visual configurability (more than just alternating dead black and glare white, like all "modern" OSs, including most of linux) and it fails to regularly annoy me. I loathe MacOS's whole way of being, so it's not an option. The program I depend on and can't replace (my writing software!!) runs on anything from 95 on, but looks like shit on Win11, so here I am.
I do use Win11 (however, I don't use OneDrive, at all) mostly for graphics stuff and when I need LibreOffice (old versions have too many issues) and once beaten into submission, it's pretty decent. Between purely local account, OpenShell, and Winaero Tweaker (to properly adjust system fonts and disable all the crap) I can get it to a usable state where it doesn't make my eyes bleed. But I'd hate to be stuck with it for everyday.
However, I live in the file manager, and having that in various ways annoying or broken (here largely imitating linux, where the file managers and system search uniformly suck) has torn out much of my hair. I have not found a 3rd party file manager that is both 100% stable (I've had all of them crash, dealbreaker) and actually works in the simple straightforward way that Windows File Manager used to. On linux, XFE is the least crap, and it can't see network drives. Dolphin... well, I got used to it, but I don't like it.
I found Win7 insufficiently stable (it's the fancy desktop stuff; Server2008R2 is completely stable, but has shit performance), and Win10 too ugly, and that propelled renewed experimentation with linux (first experience was RedHat6 in 1997, then Mandrake, so I'm not cherry here.) Which finally achieved "good enough for everyday desktop use" 7-8 years ago, and there, only the KDE desktop is sufficiently complete and mature. All the rest have functionality gaps, or operate in some paradigm I dislike (Gnome makes Win10 look good. If I wanted a cellphone for my desktop, I'd use a cellphone.) And which distro is under the DE makes a huge difference. PCLinuxOS is super fast and had been super-stable, and I've been using it for 8 years, but it's a one-man-band and presently in flux due to the necessary transition to KDE6 and Wayland (sorry, X has always sucked) and away from APT kinda all at once. OpenMandriva is almost as slick, until you go to update it, and it breaks. Fedora (my next choice) is a hog and needs a lot more hardware under it, but utterly mainstream, therefore more predictable. The less said about Ubuntu the better.
I have a PC set up as a Chromebook, just because. (When you collect computers, you can waste a few... I also have a Hackintosh, just because.) Horrible as a desktop experience, unless your needs are very narrow. Again, I DO NOT WANT A CELLPHONE as my desktop!
So, yeah. "Modernization" of the desktop has spewed broken stuff all over, yet for most of us there's too much friction elsewhere. And mark my words, the next major change in Windows will be to OS by subscription. This has been Microsoft's wet dream since the Win2K launch (I was there, and with my own ears heard them wax poetic about this very goal) and between ubiquitous fast internet and the TPM chip allowing disk encryption for all, this goal is now achievable. Software vendors get a more predictable cashflow, business gets cost leveling and can offload all the liablity to the software vendor, and consumer-level users (that's us) get screwed. But all the money is in enterprise business (which includes OEMs like HP and Dell who preinstall the OS). Home users are not revenue, we are a support cost, and Microsoft would rather we all went away and stopped bothering them.
And with Woke presently infesting much of linux, and the Cult of Rust breaking existing software (eg. CoreUtils on Ubuntu), that's actually becoming a less viable escape route.
So my solution is XP64 (with support for massive RAM that base XP lacks) for everyday, so I don't have to reach through the monitor and force-choke a UI developer. Linux to mostly fill in the modern gaps. And I will be preserving a stable version of Win11 for the graphics apps that need it (which I've been slowly collecting, Humble Bundle makes it cheap). Virtual machines sometimes (hilariously, I have a Win8.1 VM that runs on XP64... and still gets updates!!) but they're not a good everyday solution, and neither is WINE. And no, I don't want AI shoveled in everywhere. In Notepad? seriously??
So this is where I'll be, because I don't like the software future I see very much.
"We are living in the future, I'll tell you how I know
I read it in the papers, fifteen years ago.
We're all driving rocketships, and talking with our minds
And wearing turquoise jewelry, and standing in soup lines.
We are standing in soup lines."
--John Prine
It's sort of a weird thing to say that Linux installation needs to get smoother. Back in 2011 when I switched permanently, it took less than 10 minutes to install Ubuntu. Things have improved since.
And when I installed Debian 8 OR 9 (I have a stack of hard drives and a hotswap bay, so I have one of everything installed) the damn thing took four hours, and had to be babysat the whole time. Some of 'em still take half an hour. PCLinuxOS takes five minutes. Fact is linux is all over the map.
Weird…I’ve installed at least a half-dozen other distros and maybe the longest running ones were Raspbian, mostly because SD cards are quite slow. I have no idea why simply having hard drives would make an install process slow down in any way unless you were installing different partitions of the root system across the lot, which is a strange thing to do and very manual. Maybe LFS would take that long, because you have to build the kernel. Or old-school Arch from 10 years ago.
I don't know what Debian's trip was. I just followed the prompts, and...
More recently I went to upgrade Debian 10 to 11, and it refused.
It's just "in the stack in case I need it" not actually used, so I said fine, I'll do a clean install of 11 or 12, whatever was current by then. Imagine my surprise when it preserved my existing setup. It did take quite a while, but not like the first time.
My Fedora install (which I actually use) goes all the way back to F32, and it's never given me these problems... tho Discover never finishes updates, so that's always done at the terminal. I've still got the same command in the buffer from 6 years ago, so it's just up-arrow, yes, very complicated. :)
There is now constant friction when using the OS. If I want to save a document, I have to click several extra times, opening a whole new UI element, just to save it to Google Drive or a specific place on my drives (which is necessary now).
I turned off my cloud drive, and save everything to my desktop, then create folders for what I need.
True, my desktop is cluttered, but I know where everything is.
I disabled the update months ago, and keep booting it down the line every 5 weeks.
Yes! The friction. I have to open several separate dialogue boxes to save a document where I want. It’s a little thing, but it adds up, especially when there was less friction before.
The thing I don't get is: the New Car Problem is only a problem if you keep having to sell people a new one every 5 years.
But Microsoft doesn't have that problem because they have their customers shackled to a subscription just to keep using the OS they already have.
So, what's their motivation?
I already posted this comment on your YouTube video, but I'll post it here as well, in case anyone here finds it useful.
I had heard a lot of bad word of mouth about Windows 11, and even watched a video from a former Microsoft coder who explained some of the problems with it, so I have always been intent on avoiding ever using it. I'm currently running Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC, which will still be supported by Microsoft until 2032. The reason for this is that the Enterprise version of Windows is what large corporations who buy Windows computers in bulk for their employees use. Microsoft knew that discontinuing support for the Enterprise version of Windows at the same time as for everyone else would cause a lot of trouble for a lot of companies, so they have given Windows 10 Enterprise an extra 7 years of support. That may be only a temporary reprieve, but hopefully by 2032 there will either be a better alternative available or Microsoft will have caved to pressure to either drastically improve Windows 11 or start supporting all versions of Windows 10 again.
My computer originally came with Windows 10 Pro, but I used a free script from Bladez1992 at GitHub called LTSConvert to convert it to Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC a few months ago. It doesn't cost anything to do, and it's very easy if you follow the instructions from the Github page. All of my Windows settings and files were left intact, and Windows actually seems to run smoother than it did before, probably because the Enterprise version of Windows is more free of bloat because it's designed for corporate use. It has all of the same features as Windows 10 Pro except for the Snipping Tool, which I personally miss a little but most people never use.
If it's at all possible for you, I would recommend installing Windows 10 on your computer, then using LTSConvert to convert it to the Enterprise version.
https://github.com/Bladez1992/LTSConvert
Maybe I should degrade, if that's the right word.
I've actually found Win11 overall better than 10, especially on limited hardware. Fewer issues, more coherent. But (just like Win10) it does require a good beating to make it behave. I apply OpenShell and Winaero Tweaker (to disable all the bloat) and in five minutes I have a usable desktop. Also, using a local account makes most of the really annoying crap just ... disappear.
Mind you, my daily driver is still XP64, so that should tell you what I regard as "usable".
And that I do not give a flip about "support".
Tho threats of support ending... well. I have various Windows for various purposes (or just because it was already there), and...
-- Win10 continues to receive daily security-definition updates, and occasionally system updates.
-- Win8.1 last got a major system update August 2025, WTF.
-- Win7 ... imagine my astonishment when last month I had the old laptop up, and it got two shiny new security updates!
NONE of these are LTS editions. All ordinary Pro.
Meanwhile, one of the Win11 netbooks whines that it's too old and will receive no more updates. (Fine. Disabled Windows Update, stop bothering me about it.)
I think they have an automated build farm that doesn't distinguish by version, let alone EOL, so if you're logged into the "broad" channel, they keep on coming.
I'm glad that you're having a good experience with Windows 11, but personally, I would rather avoid using it, if at all possible. While I know that there are some things that can be done to tweak it to make it better and eliminate some of the issues, there are some issues with it that are very difficult, if not impossible, to fully excise. This video explains some of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C44iCr6czAo
Yeah, Rob is a total privacy freak, so he's very unhappy with Win11. And there may be good reasons for some people to avoid it. But contrary to popular opinion, Win10 had the same telemetry. So if it's privacy that's your desire, Win10 is not a sound strategy. It's actually easier to find what needs disabling in Win11, because it's not scattered all over, and stuff more-reliably stays disabled. (And updates can be disabled entirely, if you wish, with Winaero. I have not got that to work on Win10.)
The new AI can be disabled or even removed (there are tools for this), but frankly there is nothing forcing anyone to use it. Encouraging by path of least resistance, certainly, same as OneDrive does. But not mandatory.
My solution is to disable what annoys me, use a good HOSTS file, ignore the stuff I don't use, and not worry too much about it. I have spent some time observing Win11 with Wireshark, and didn't see anything obviously nefarious. (Checked because I didn't recognise the host updates were coming from.... turned out Microsoft was using Amazon's servers.)
As I note above, I believe the next major iteration of Windows will be OS by subscription, and then we'll long for the good old days of Win11. :(
I won't go to windows 11 because windows 10 has failed already in so many ways.
I can't turn off trivia on the startup screen, which makes it lag and makes me focus harder on what I sat down to do like an annoying coworker trying to bother you with what happened on a TV show you don't watch when you have an actual productive question you sat down to search.
I have to write down lines for stories on paper before I type them into a file, because it takes my computer so long to boot up, even when it's already on.
My default windows image viewer crashed all the time. And it got wonky if you needed images larger and wanted to move to another image. I've never had a problem with that since the late 90s. I had to seek out a 3rd party image browser, ImageEye. Wild. But I can't print from ImageEye, so... extra steps.
And it already couldn't search remote drives in 10. Sounds like 11 just brought that to the local box.