It has been a long time since I extensively used Windows. I tried 11 briefly by using a tool to let my computer run it (I was on an older processor which failed the Windows 11 requirements). I have been anti-Microsoft for awhile now, but recently have become more lax with my opinions on software and privacy and wanted to see how things went.
My main reason for checking things out is that I’m a bit tired of self-managing all my software on Linux. I have spent a good bit of time configuring my system. I don’t want to spend more time on it when things update and/or break. I mostly just want to use my computer nowadays. I also want to be able to install and play games without any configuration necessary. Perhaps a good solution might be to install Fedora, but for now, I want to try Windows.
Installation
It went smoothly. I had an old M2 drive around, so I installed it there. I unhooked my other drives as I remembered that the Windows installer sometimes likes to format your other drives, even when you don’t tell it to.
I was, of course, required to create a Microsoft account, but was pleased to realize that I didn’t need to activate other services such as Outlook or anything else. You can use whatever email you’d like.
Account set-up was pretty simple. I was surprised to see the amount of privacy settings that are there before you start using the computer. They are all on by default, but you can just switch them off and Windows doesn’t complain.
Post-Install
I had a very weird issue that I can only describe as “it’s Windows”. I launched a game on Steam, and it was installing something. I then proceeded to install GOG Galaxy, and the installer never popped up. Then, I joined a voice channel on Discord and realized my audio wasn’t working. The game I had launched on Steam would not quit even through Task Manager.
I was reminded of dumb issues like this where the solution is to restart your computer. Which I did. Since then, I have noticed odd audio switching. Even though I disabled other audio interfaces, sometimes they just come back up like they’re new. Windows then decides to switch to that new one.
Wall of Issues
Windows is still annoying. It bugs you quite a bit about various things.
- It noticed that I play games, so it has suggested the Xbox app to me almost every day.
- OneDrive automatically syncs various files and there is no option to turn it off until after you start using your computer. Once disabled, the Security Center bugs you about it being off. You can disable this warning, and also uninstall OneDrive. OneDrive should be something you opt into.
- There are two locations for Documents in File Explorer. Meaning, one on the sidebar with different files, and one in your
Users/Xfolder with different files. I don’t understand why, and I’m sure this has led to much confusion among non tech-savvy people. - There is sometimes a general slowness to some programs launching and being used.
- When running certain games, the rest of Windows runs at a slower framerate despite this option being turned off in settings.
- GOG Galaxy is bad. It’s slow and unresponsive at times, and has never launched correctly (I need to attempt to launch it at least twice).
- Scaling isn’t the best. Some programs are fine, but others look very blurry (particularly old installers).
- The app I use for passwords: it’s Windows version is really slow.
UPDATE 04/17/2025: Terrible issues.
- I attempted to install
wsl. The install wouldn’t proceed, so I cancelled it. Despite being cancelled, the icons showed up as if it was installed. I attempted to install it again, and it said it was successful. I rebooted, and nothing was there. A few days later I was able to install it without error. - I installed vim from the official installer. I later downloaded UniGetUI (a gui that supports multiple package managers for Windows) and attempted to remove vim from that (vim isn’t great on Windows). It didn’t work. I then uninstalled vim by deleting files, but the app was still showing in my shortcuts. I installed vim through UniGetUI and it kept trying to open the old vim install, which didn’t work. I had to redownload vim from the website and run the uninstaller to get rid of it completely.
- The above issue has happened to a couple other random utilities.
- I finally figured out why there are two document folders. One is local and one is for OneDrive. Windows has the system folders set to OneDrive. If you delete them, you can’t get them back, even if you create a new folder, you can’t just assign that folder as the “Documents” folder. Apps will be confused. In order to get them back, you need to reinstall OneDrive, login, and sync. Then, you have to go to the settings menu and disable sync for all the folders. Then you can uninstall OneDrive and you have basic folders. Also, if you happen to delete the folder and restore from Trash AFTER uninstalling OneDrive, you can’t change the default location of the folder. I can’t tell you how frustrated this made me.
- I installed Sea of Thieves, and the window to login to Xbox wasn’t big enough to show the “Login” button. I restarted the game and this time just waited around. It never changed. I alt-tabbed to Discord and played a video; my computer froze and rebooted. I’m in awe that a game made by Microsoft simply doesn’t work on Windows.
- The GPG key passphrase prompt is painfully slow.
- When attempting to push the commit for this post update, I needed to start ssh. Windows terminal simply would not start the agent. I tried Git Bash, and it came up with a random list of processes that I did not start. I restarted Git Bash and it finally started up normally.
- Git Bash does not show hard drives in the root folder, but will still take you to the correct folder if you type in the right drive letter.
Gaming
Installing games is much easier than on Linux. Downloading installers from itch or GOG is simple and works well. No worries about missing dependencies or anything like that.
Despite this, I learned that some games run worse on Windows than Linux. Performance-wise, it’s not drastic, but the simple action of clicking “Play” sometimes just doesn’t work. There are a couple games I have played on Steam where this is the case; I need to click Launch, let the game figure itself out, then click again after it (I guess) crashes.
Something I have been pretty disappointed in recently is the amount of Unreal 5 games, planned and released. I thought that maybe the games would play better on Windows, but they don’t. Unreal 5 seems to be a pretty bad release (or is at least in a bad state), with stuttering and performance issues abound. It’s unfortunate that gaming computers are turning into Unreal/Unity machines. Buying better hardware used to mean something, but if the software doesn’t perform then everyone suffers. I’m curious to know if these problems persist on consoles.
Development
I’m not a huge fan of the typical workflow for Windows. It’s confusing to have to download tools that try to bundle in so many features. I have 4 different terminals installed on my computer, and “Terminal” just points to one of them. I just want things to simply work, but it seems like for development purposes I would need to manually configure various things again just for Windows. Is that worth my time?
Windows gives you a whole toolbox of random tools. Some might be haphazardly joined together, but they’ll get you some kind of result. The drawers for the toolbox are unlabeled and the sizes are weird. Sometimes the tool you pulled out just won’t fit back in. Often, you search for a tool and can’t find it, and a different tool has that functionality, but you don’t really want to use it because you decide it’s too big. It can hard to understand the tools because you don’t know who made them or for what purpose.
Linux gives you a small set of tools, with the option to get more small sets of tools. You can try different tools out and easily remove them from your toolbelt if needed. You can easily replace one if it seems to no longer do the job. You know exactly where your tools are and what condition they are in. Your tools can also be configured to work with each other.
Conclusion
I’m in the middle on this one. Installing games is a bit easier. I’m not currently developing something. If I have a new game idea, developing it might sway me back to Linux. Development is simply subpar compared to Linux. Windows wants to give you all the tools necessary, but I find it unintuitive and confusing.
A downside of using Windows seems to be that tools, programs, games are easily installed, but may not function correctly. If they don’t, the solution is often “just restart”. What level of entropy are we operating at where that is usually the right solution?
Despite these frustrations, I want to give Windows some more time. I’ll be staying on it for a bit longer, just to see if things even out.
UPDATE 04/17/2025: It has been less than two weeks since I wrote this post. I have added many more issues to my wall. Some of them are insane, particularly the OneDrive/folder issue. I am completely disappointed in Windows and I think will end up just using something like Linux Mint or trying another DE. For an OS that is supposed to “just work”, so many things are designed to be broken easily. I still haven’t found a good solution for development besides simple editing in Sublime Text, which I don’t own and don’t really like.