!rant People like to give Windows a lot of shit (me too!) but at the end of the day I still haven't found a cleaner, smoother and more reliable OS.

For what it's worth, Windows is really quite a lovely experience when moved from the horrid white theme to the dark one, and when set up with the latest drivers. Dell's SupportAssist means I literally, *literally*, get one-click installation of all missing and new drivers for my XPS laptop. Telemetary, Cortana and other annoying stuff like OneDrive integration can be completely disabeld via ShutUp10 and with the right chipset drivers and good hardware, programs take seconds to install.

Compatibiltiy is the most important thing to me. On Windows everything just generally works. I spend a fraction of the time debugging on Windows as what I do on Linux. No need to create a runtime script to fix screen-tearing, no need to install missing fonts, search for missing divers manually and create runtime scripts for them. No need for shit like Wine (though I really appreciate Wine and the team behind it). Also as much as I really like the various Software Centers on Linux, they're full of outdated versions of the software they provide and the Snap store is missing a LOT of software... I already spend enough time on Stackoverflow for Python and C#, having to dig through it just to use my OS is kind of ridiculous...

Linux really only gives me two things that I really wish Windows had. 1) The ability to disable my Intel graphcis chip and force everything to use my Nvidia GTX card. 2) Security.

On Windows I get 4x better battery life at minimum even after disabling my Nvidia GPU, messing around with laptop-mode-tools and powertop on Linux. Application GUIs aren't all broken and I'm not getting system-wide freezes after coming out of suspend and my Bluetooth isn't getting soft-locked and suffering from underruns sending my amplifier cracks and pops at max fucking volume either.

Linux is so much better than it was 3 years ago when I gave it a huge shot on my last laptop. Especially now that we don't need that god awful bumblebee any more. Though the community seems more divided than ever with more distros popping up all the time and many just being dropped (RIP Antergos). I guess when it comes to Linux people always want different things and coordinating such a huge project (and for free) is really difficult, which is why small groups just band together to make their own distro.

2020 will still be the year of the Linux machine in my opinion. Windows has dropped the ball too hard on too many things and ramming telemetary down people's throats is not something anyone appreciates. I mean really, all that telemetary and they still managed to pull that crazy stunt with Windows 8 removing the start menu and creating this monstrosity that is the settings panel on Windows 10, vs the clean old Control Panel that I miss. Windows has made too many bad moves with their tiled interface, ridiculous Windows store push, bad update management and even going as far as baking advertising into the OS. People are getting sick their shit and for good reason.

Linux on the other hand hasn't made any bad moves, nor will they probably ever. Instead they're just that really slow but steady turtle that's getting closer and closer to the universally better OS choice no matter how many billions Microsoft throws behind Windows. What's really lacking is better software support from vendors matched with a distro team that realises we're living in 2020 where you know, 4K screens on a laptop are common and you might actually need to rework you fucking DE so it doesn't look like absolute shit on a HiDPI screen. *This is where Root will tell me she pities anyone that uses a DE.*

Still, if Windows/Nvidia/AMD could just give me the fucking ability to FORCE and I mean FORCE applications to use my dedicated GPU when I tell them to, instead of just fucking randomly deciding to swap back to the integrated Intel one whenever they please, and despite me EXPLICITLY running them on my dedicated GPU AND in fucking PERFORMANCE MODE. That would be great.

In short, Linux is definitely the better choice if you have a laptop and are doing "laptop things" like web browsing, coding and social media and aren't multitasking more than that. Windows as a whole is better as a Desktop solution.

I really look forward to a day when Linux looks way more elgant and plays so much nicer with modern hardware. A day when Windows just cannot compete except to go free and even then people won't trust them because they'll be storing and saving your data left and right and baking ads into everything. #Linuxmajorityby 2025?

Huh, what's that you're saying, "What about MacOS?" What the fuck is that? I've never heard of it. 😉

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    My major pain points in Windows today are: advertising, phone home/telemetry, loads of crap that most people (me for sure) don't need but jumps into your face randomly, bloated installations of driver packages and standard software that will install unnecessary services and other components, and more in a similar vein.

    I no longer use Windows at home (the last Windows 7 installation was replaced with Linux several years ago), and I am quite pleased with the ability of a well-groomed Linux setup to stay slim and responsive. You can possibly achieve something similar with Windows but in my experience, trimming down a Windows installation is quite a painful act. Plus, it is very hard to find authoritative documentation on what service is really used for what purpose, and whether it can safely be disabled or not.

    If HW compatibility was up to par, I'd even switch to FreeBSD or OpenBSD but, alas, both have too many warts that bug me in day-to-day usage so I was unable to switch just yet.
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    Oh, and don't get me started on MsMpEng.exe sucking up CPU time like a sponge, and making the CPU fan spin eternally…
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    I‘d prefer a hackintosh over windows at any time, although it can involve more fixing/debugging than linux sometimes ...
    my hackintosh has been running for almost 8 years now (started at MacOS 10.6!)
    smoothest system every, everytime I boot windows something fucks up (bootloader during update, screen scaling, always reverts to 30hz/4k ... just way too many frustrating moments)
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    For me, a Windows installation into which I have poured a lot of time to get working the way I want is best described as, "less annoying, but still feature-deficient." If I put the time and effort required into a Linux desktop, then the end result is a tight, slim, beautiful desktop that does everything I could want, and is a delight to use.
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    Ive never personally had an issue forcing the use of the nVidia GPU through the nVidia control panel in Windows.

    In Linux I can't even *use* my nVidia GPU, literally every Linux distro I use refuses to even boot unless I force use of the Intel GPU.
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    @stonestorm don't use nouveau drivers, use optimus-manager (if it's a laptop), and then switch to AMD.
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    @chabad360 it's a laptop, and apologies but I don't find "change your GPU" as very helpful.
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    @stonestorm my laptop is also nvidia, but thankfully I haven't had any issues once I got optimus-manager running. It's a very helpful tool (but it does add at least 4 seconds to boot time).

    I said switch to AMD because one should learn from their mistakes. I sure learnt from mine... Gonna get an AMD powered laptop in five years.
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    @stonestorm That's how it starts, but after you finally get into Linux, installing the drivers and blocking Nouveau works fine.
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    You have some really good points but I wouldn't call windows reliable, my old install shat itself from an update so Windows couldn't boot. Something that never happend on a *nix system for me
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