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5 reasons you should ditch Windows for Linux today
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this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2025
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The first one (MS account) is so weird to me...
I mean, I get it, people are just allergic to "anything MS", but it's just silly.
Set up a "burner" MS account. Use it to set up the OS, get your BitLocker recovery key and the OS license backed up automatically for easy use. Create your regular local account, switch, remove admin rights from the MS account, never use it again.
Job done, problem solved.
The third one (better performance) is disingenuous. Better performance... where? On what hardware? Nvidia drivers are notorious for causing issues. Many games, even on Proton, run like crap or just... don't run.
The last one, security, is also a bad reason. Linux is not inherently more secure than Windows, it's just less attacked due to a lower desktop market share. What Linux does have, however, is that it's massively easier to break by a clueless user, especially when following online advice when something isn't working - and that's going to be a common occurrence, especially with freshly-switched newbies. Windows will prevent noobs from breaking or exposing a lot of stuff.
The urban legend that Linux is more secure than Windows needs to die.
I'm always amused at the hoops that some Windows users will jump through in a vain attempt to sidestep Microsoft's telemetry and surveillance—rather than just using an OS that respects your privacy to begin with. It's gotta be Stockholm syndrome or something.
EDIT: https://tessa.transpri.de/i/ngcpy.gif
It's the nvidia performance issues that keep me on Windows. I'd love to use an operating system that values and respects my privacy. But I'm not willing to take a large gaming performance hit to do it. That day this gets fixed I am dropping Windows and never looking back.
I can totally see that. Maybe it's something to consider in advance for your next graphics card.
I'm always amused at people just randomly talking about telemetry (without understanding what it is), even unprompted.
Pray tell, why did you feel the need to say it, especially say it this way? I never mentioned anything about telemetry in the first place...
Oh, wait! Do you believe that the existence of an MS account on your device changes something related to telemetry.....?
I mentioned telemetry because Windows (by default) regularly shares information collected from your computer with Microsoft. Some people try to work around that when they could instead invest that time elsewhere (say, installing Linux).
Yes, it does, but telemetry is not what people think it is.
Remember how Microsoft regularly kills those "cool features" for "no reason at all"? That's because those that use them have telemetry blocked, so - from MS point of view - it seems like nobody is using them. Why waste dev time on something that nobody uses?
That's telemetry. It's anonymous. It tells them which parts of the OS work, which cause issues, which features are utilised, which aren't. It's not spying, it's diagnostics.
Do you honestly and truly believe that nobody has ever analysed these packets? That nobody in any security position, especially in business, has ever checked if sensitive information wasn't being transmitted? That the entire IT and Data Security world just goes "huh, I guess they're spying on us, nothing we can do about it"?
Huh?
Oh yeah, Recall, the absolutely horrible... ummm... *checks notes* fully local and encrypted system... That isn't even implemented yet....... but when it is, you'll need to manually turn it on..................
Yeah, truly, the death of privacy is upon us.
Have you read the article you linked?
Windows telemetry is encrypted, which as you can imagine, makes it hard to analyze.
I don't know exactly what that's referring to, but maybe it's the fact that some (not all) of the bullet points in this telemetry doc are super high level, leaving much to the imagination: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/optional-diagnostic-data
Also, even if every last bit of telemetry was completely documented, that doesn't make it cool to send all that information to a company known for abusing user data.
Again, without source code, you're taking Microsoft's word about all of this. But let's say it is 100% what they say. An earlier version leaked the user's private information to other processes on the machine and failed to filter out sensitive user data. I have a hard time trusting an organization that is so clearly reckless like this. Either they don't care about user privacy—or they do care and they're just incompetent. I'm not sure which one is worse.
Yup.
OK. Let's assume nobody has ever gone through it. Do you imagine that - especially in the US - lawyers of massive companies didn't wring out anything and everything about telemetry?
Do you imagine companies like JP Morgan, or - famous for money laundering terrorist money - HSBC would be happily using operating systems with "spyware"?
The one you linked is the Optional Diagnostics Data, this is the one you can disable by toggling telemetry to "basic".
So every "power user" disables it, and then complains when Microsoft kills a power-user feature because their data showed that nobody was using it. :D
I mean... You can easily tell if the data is being sent out (massive increase in outbound connections) or if it's encrypted (... can't read it without decrypting).
Correct. An early test version had bugs. Colour me shocked.
Or... the whole thing was about an early test version and everybody blew this massively out of proportion...
So you know that the only problem and the reason for the lawsuit was that they were collecting the data in the wrong order (should've started with parent consent) and then kept it for too long? Not that they were endangering the children's data, or gathering too much of it? As in: if they asked for parent's consent first, THEN gathered the data they gathered, there would be no lawsuit?
What is the legal mechanism they have for doing that? Microsoft is holding all the cards here.
Happily? That I can't say. But they are using Windows despite any "spyware." Likely because, like you, they deem the risks worth it.
What percentage of Windows users (power users or otherwise) would you guess disable it? Unless it's the vast majority, the article's quote still stands.
Anyway, on the other points, I don't think we're going to come to an agreement here. You seem to be defending the questionable behavior of a massive corporation, and I'm not buying that it's all a big misunderstanding, a beta feature, just a bug, etc etc.
The fact remains that Microsoft has a long and sordid history of privacy violations and security lapses. You can choose to look past that and defend them, and that's your choice.
Linux is more secure than Windows
Linux-desktop is less attacked than Windows.
Are you kidding? My public facing VMs get ssh brute force attacks like 10 times a minute, that's not counting http attacks, vulnerability scanners, etc etc. all of the internet is running on Linux.
OK, maybe I'm wrong. Why do you think Linux is more secure than Windows (taking into account user-land issues, mind you)?