I'm just putting it out there, Windows 10 was also bad. Like, the only substantial advantage it had over Windows 7 from a UX perspective was a nicer file transfer UI. Cortana was a slop feature, and it + advertisements + web search suggestions ruined the start menu

April 11, 2026 - 20:51 UTC

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For me, it was fine OS until they AI to their PC and stripped all the privacy.

The more I got into software development, then more I hated windows.
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yes but it was better then the vague idea of 8 people had in their heads (not the real 8 which mostly was fine after the first tear update that let u turn off the weird boxes nightmare they trapped u in but still)
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Windows hasn't had a good OS since XP. As I recall, after XP they discarded a perfectly good foundation and started over from scratch. Bad move.
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grass is green
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I keep a Windows 7 laptop around that still has a cd drive for old games
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I still have an older machine running 7 too. Great OS for Retro stuff.
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lol, you know you can just turn those off, right? 30 seconds worth of fiddling with settings and you would have never seen any ads or web search suggestions again but hey, why not ride the Microsoft Hate Train, right?
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Windows 2000 Pro, bring it back!
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Yes ❤️
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Happily watches files transfer in the blink of an eye on my debian/macos network.
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MS ran out of improvement ideas long ago. Windows 10 was to be the last ever version.
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Windows 7 was the platonic ideal of Windows. Everything after that made it worse
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It was the last good Windows in my opinion.
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The number of times I’d boot into Windows and there’d be some random advert in Start or some new stupid widget in the taskbar…
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And Cortana is hard as hell to get rid of, even with Reg hacks, but it can be partially controlled and made less invasive.
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And even removing it, a random update can "magically" bring it back.
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yeah i'm still on 10 and it's... fine. start menu is total trash though. stop trying to bing search for an app i have installed
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I hate it too but Linux didn't fit for me. I just don't have the patience to manually set it up how I want and the games I play regularly require 75 lines of code to use certain things like Overlays such as Blish mod in GW2
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Gaming has really improved on Linux from what I've read. Most Steam games just work now. Some are even better than their Windows versions.
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Windows 10 is what made me finally go full time Linux at home
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2000 Professional, XP, and 7 were my favorite versions of Windows. They did what you needed without tons of unnecessary bloat.

I'm currently in the process of moving from 11 to Linux Mint. I've heard great things. 🐧
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At least on windows 10 it was easy enough to actually turn all that shit off

Like you could just right click and unpin all the advertisements and Cortana, then the web search at least was a registry setting that actually SAVED when you edited it to turn it off
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Windows XP was the only windows OS that ever earned any respect.
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I wonder how the beta for XP was...
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All downhill from there.

Maybe never should've left 98, like we never should've left the trees.
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Disagree. 2000 was about as good and didn't need remote activation, and NT won a certain amount of respect once "it needs how much RAM just to boot?" stopped being an issue.
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Since about Windows 2000, "really great Windows release" has largely been defined in terms of just not doing anything obviously disastrously moronic.
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I ran 2000 for ages. It did everything XP did for me and just felt more polished overall. It's probably my favorite Windows OS.
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I want to argue but you’re not wrong.
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I have three desktops I use for work, a Win 11, Win 10, and a 12+ year old Win 7 machine still going strong. I use it now as an in-house development web server, mostly because the other software I use daily stopped W7 support.
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Agreed. I moved to @linuxmint.bsky.social after 10 was released. Sadly, I still have to use Windows for work.
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nobody has wanted to upgrade Windows to the next version for a very long time bc the next version is always worse, but that doesnt mean the last version was good, its degrees of enshittification
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I switched over to Linux (Ubuntu 25) earlier this year when Microslop kept installing Edge regardless of what I tried.
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In 2001, I switched from Windows to Linux for personal use, after two years of trying out Linux had shown me that it gave me far more freedom than Windows. For work, I had to keep using Windows until 2023... When I came home and switched on my home computer, I felt like a caged bird set free.
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I tried about 10 years ago, but ended up having to go back to Windows. I'm moving my daily machine to Mint now. Hopefully I can ditch Windows for good this time.
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Use linux whenever possible, avoid MS and Apple whenever possible. Your work uses linux for pretty much everything behind the scenes anyhow (if they know it or not), but forces the end user to use these sadistic OS's.
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microsoft laid off a bunch of their quality assurance/software testing team just before the launch of windows 10. and since windows 11 they've been using LLMs to write code for the OS, which mostly seems to be web components at this point. those two decisions seems to be why they're in this mess.
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No they are in this mess because they keep trying to make windows into a social media machine. The only reason they are still in business is because corporate America can't seem to get off of Outlook and they don't have any competition.
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I had an IBM PC at work in 1986. I recently retired from I.T. after using every Windows there ever was.

Now my main rig is a docked Steam Deck. The Steam OS desktop experience is a really smooth Linux transition from Windows. I can do everything I need to do (free) without the constant shovelware.
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They have said it for years, but I really think it's Linux's time here in 2026.
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oh shit i didn't know you were on bsky. also yes you're 100% right. Also on linux.
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I have a quad core i5 running 2Ghz on 6Gb RAM and it runs like utter shit. The taskbar alone is inexcusable slop.
We had much higher standards when making CICS apps for 3270 dumb terminals with 1% of the power, and PHP/Apache/Postgres with any browser is superior for pretty much anything enterprise🤡
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Microslop has shat the bed. It’s time to rethink business without it.
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Someone I used to work with named her kid Cortana. Then that came out.

Shit you not.
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I would have stayed on Win 7 if new hardware supported it
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Only good eventually as a "not so bad anymore" version came around, and in contrast with windows 8.
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This x 1000%
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Just get linux and choose which version you like best and even customize it with ease to suit your needs
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If they just hired the Cortana voice actor from Halo, Microsoft would own the world right now.
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Both Microsoft and Apple OSes originate from the 1990s idea that the GUI should be an inextricable part of the OS kernel.

If you look at the *nix systems (Linux and the BSDs), they’re not like that.
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Huh? Microsoft may violate Ring 1 by running video device drivers there, but macOS is a Mach micro kernel with BSD laid atop it. MacOS _is_ UNIX. There is no UI in the Darwin kernel, and you can conceptually run it without a GUI if you really want.
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Don't worry y'all I'm already on linux, plus I was right there excitedly joining the windows 8 beta when I was like 14, I remember how much worse it *could* be
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i remember my dad handing me a freshly burned dvd with the windows 8 beta and me booting it up and being confused how to even use the os
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i completely forgot the beta holy moly
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8 was rough. Although it doesn't touch the trainwreck that was Windows ME.
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Windows 8.1 was pretty good though. Very stable in my experience.
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WIDNOWS XP ONLY ONE THAT DONT GIVE ME HEART BURN
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11 really was the last nail in the coffin for MS as far as I'm concerned. It would take a massive change of direction for me to consider using, let alone installing Windows for work or play. The user should control the computer, not the other way around. If I want AI, I'll install my own.
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That and the fact that they told consumers to upgrade (pay) or pay for security updates for software you already bought.. that's called a racket.. I dislike bullies, and that is taking advantage of a non technical install base who don't know their choices.
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Linux has been able to copy everything good from Windows and MacOS and then they just added garbage no one wanted. Linux improved upon Windows and MacOS by just adding things people asked for.
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Windows 11 doesn't come with a simple text editor like Wordpad or Textedit. That is a REAL nuisance to me.

Also the way the windows handle is shit.
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the last ver where I felt in control was 2000 where my love of DOS could be used to bypass Windows. Now so convoluted I'm lost.
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Windows 7 for me was peak.
Windows Vista? "The Horror! The Horror!"
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Vista was decent after the Service Packs and near its End of Life. Still not a great OS, but they did fix a lot of stuff near the end. However most people had already moved on from Vista by then.
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XP was the only decent operating system Microsoft ever created.
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NT was also excellent but not a consumer product.
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Also the start menu search bar not finding the files and apps that definitely were in there. Terrible!
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Windows 7 was also bad
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I was there at the beginning. Windows has always sucked.
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valid.
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I did as best as I could with 10 up until this year, cutting out cortana and ads. But it just made it buggier. Now I'm on pop! Os and it's fine, everything works.
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