That sucks that it's been such a pain.

I can't say I've ever experienced the same though, windows install is a breeze and very fast, and on W10/11 these days everything just basically works perfectly out of the box for gaming.

I use both Windows and linux daily. I don't have an issue with either.

Pretty much all OS installs have the capability to go really wrong. Once a Mac user was making fun of me for needing to deal with weirdness installing Linux on an old Windows laptop. He stopped when I asked if I should install OSX instead. 😁

As someone who helped friends/family build PC gaming rigs multiple times last year (2023) I understand what you're coming from W11 installer is pure dogshit.

Tbh tho, my dad always hated new Windows versions because he didn't want to learn a new UI/UX, which I fine, but the windows experience isnt that hard to learn, even if it is different. Same thing with Linux, if you use GNOME/KDE/i3/hyprland/sway/ for the first time it won't be easy to find all of the settings either.

But the W11 installer in particular sucks ass. There is so many restrictions that try to prevent you from even installing it. The one rescue for me was downloading the Rufus USB ISO tool and letting it download the W11 installer itself and apply patches which removed all the ridiculous restrictions.

I mean, you can even rub that shit in Virtual box if you want. My GF is literally running it on "unsupported hardware" according to Microsoft but windows updates and everything post-install is completely functional.

Only reason Mictorsoft Philips wants the restrictions is to have a tighter grip on the ecosystem and limit end consumers from installing it themselves and pushing that part to other companies or retailers which they can buy finished products (laptops etc) from instead of licenses.

my first was 98 and last was xp. Since then i'm on linux. When i encounter 10 or 11 on machines that i need to tweak, it "blue screens" my mind how opaque it became. It is so unnecessarily cluttered i can't find my way to a simple "system" window unless i use the habitual shortcuts 🤷

That bad?

Last time I used Windows on my own was back in the XP days. I saw some of the early Vista and it was even worse. I can't imagine what the recent versions are like.

When you get it working it's just so cumbersome to use. I do most of my work on servers and doing anything with a Windows server is a pain in the ass. Want to restart something? Open an RDP session, wait for it to load, open the Services, wait for it to load, filter through thousands of services to find the one you want, fucking right-click on it and pick restart.

Compare this to Linux where you get a snappy SSH shell and restart it with one command.

And then there's the goddamn Windows Event Viewer. Can't have log files being, ya know, files right? No, gotta put them in this application on the server, that you have to view in the GUI, and show it alongside all the other logs so you have to filter by service. Most of the time I just export them to text files just because it's easier to process them on a sane OS.

When I tried the early free upgrade from Window 10 to 11, half my games wouldn't work, and I couldn't fix the UI to what was comfortable. Also all the control panels had another layer of simplified facade before it would let me see the Windows XP control panel window.

Also the games that worked had a significant framerate drop.

I swtched back after a day of frustration and every once in a while my Windows 10 nags me to try upgrading again because Win11 is much better.

I need to stop being a coward and make my switch to Linux.

I'll need to find an equivalent to Autohotkey though. I'm left handed and depend on keyboard profiles to play games.

Took me 2 days to break my work laptop and now my brightness slider is gone. Absolutely hate it.

@PeterPoopshit

Not sure why you are having issues with Windows, but Wine on Linux goes from strength to strength in its ability to play Windows games. I have a Windows 11 laptop that I barely use, I am generally speaking unimpressed by Windows, but can play games on it with no issues.