It actually is worse than “that bad”. Windows 2000 wasn’t “that bad” - everything after that has gone downhill.
Objective reasons why Windows is extremely shitty:
with every new Windows version, the same settings are shuffled around and users have to re-learn the interfaces to find stuff they had been able to easily find before
bloatware
tons of software is shoved down your throat with opt-out options either not available, or you have to jump through literal hoops to get there
I mean I can take up issues with Linux as well. The driver support can be iffy at times, especially with Nvidia, gaming can be a challenge, depending on what game you’re playing.
“Not that bad” is a phrase, which acknowledges issues but still contests something to be bad beyond acceptance.
Oh please, half the time on most computers after installing stock Windows you’ll need to install the NIC drivers from a USB stick because you can’t download drivers locally without a NIC. With Linux, it pretty works out the gate. Significant driver issues haven’t been a real issue with Linux in about a decade.
Nvidia drivers are especially weird to use as an example. Since the advent of AI, Nvidia Linux support has vastly improved since most AI use cases require Linux. It’s enterprise-ready at this point.
As for the games that don’t work well - the binaries were only built for Windows, so Linux has to jump through hoops to run them. That’s not Linux’s fault, it’s the fault of the game developers. Thanks to the FOSS community those hoops are only getting easier to jump through. Most of the games that don’t work at all depend on some sort of horrific anti-cheat rootkit that any tech literate person should consider a dealbreaker even if they use Windows as a daily driver.
And the games that do work, which is most of the games on Steam at this point, perform better on Linux than Windows on the same hardware because they don’t have to deal with the bloat of a Windows OS.
I guess if you can accept ads crammed into every nook and cranny of the OS, constantly fighting with Edge over your choice of browser, reduced battery life and system performace due to OS bloat, having every single aspect of your computing experience built around corporate profits rather than user experience, and buying a computer every few years because of planned obsolescence you could settle with a bad OS like Windows.
I always say, an OS is a tool, not a religion. I use Linux at home 98% of the time because it fits what I need to do and it’s snappier than Windows on my hardware and gives me more control, or maybe I know better how to do certain things in Linux nowadays that I’ve left Windows mostly behind. I use Windows at work because that’s what dictated, and also because MS Visio is only on Windows (I could use MacOS with Omnigraffle, but Macs are not available at my pay grade. Whatever). They pay me to work and be productive, and this means using Outlook/Teams, AD SSO integration with Edge, all the VPNs/network control/DLP agents. And luckily now I can use Linux subsystem in Windows, so I can work on the cli when I need to do something fancy.
They don’t pay me to spend hours trying to find a way to work with their systems other than what’s supported.
On the topic at hand (bootloader issues). Never had a problem personally, but Iast time I did proper dual booting (on the same drive) was with Windows8.1. Now I have different drives, with the bios configured to boot from the drive with Linux. If I want to boot on Windows 10 I actually have to change the boot sequence. And even then there is grub (from an old dual boot setup).
Hot take, windows isn’t that bad (privacy issues aside).
It actually is worse than “that bad”. Windows 2000 wasn’t “that bad” - everything after that has gone downhill.
Objective reasons why Windows is extremely shitty:
It’s always funny to me when people defend something by saying that it’s “not that bad”, because that still acknowledges that it is bad.
I mean I can take up issues with Linux as well. The driver support can be iffy at times, especially with Nvidia, gaming can be a challenge, depending on what game you’re playing.
“Not that bad” is a phrase, which acknowledges issues but still contests something to be bad beyond acceptance.
Oh please, half the time on most computers after installing stock Windows you’ll need to install the NIC drivers from a USB stick because you can’t download drivers locally without a NIC. With Linux, it pretty works out the gate. Significant driver issues haven’t been a real issue with Linux in about a decade.
Nvidia drivers are especially weird to use as an example. Since the advent of AI, Nvidia Linux support has vastly improved since most AI use cases require Linux. It’s enterprise-ready at this point.
As for the games that don’t work well - the binaries were only built for Windows, so Linux has to jump through hoops to run them. That’s not Linux’s fault, it’s the fault of the game developers. Thanks to the FOSS community those hoops are only getting easier to jump through. Most of the games that don’t work at all depend on some sort of horrific anti-cheat rootkit that any tech literate person should consider a dealbreaker even if they use Windows as a daily driver.
And the games that do work, which is most of the games on Steam at this point, perform better on Linux than Windows on the same hardware because they don’t have to deal with the bloat of a Windows OS.
I guess if you can accept ads crammed into every nook and cranny of the OS, constantly fighting with Edge over your choice of browser, reduced battery life and system performace due to OS bloat, having every single aspect of your computing experience built around corporate profits rather than user experience, and buying a computer every few years because of planned obsolescence you could settle with a bad OS like Windows.
I always say, an OS is a tool, not a religion. I use Linux at home 98% of the time because it fits what I need to do and it’s snappier than Windows on my hardware and gives me more control, or maybe I know better how to do certain things in Linux nowadays that I’ve left Windows mostly behind. I use Windows at work because that’s what dictated, and also because MS Visio is only on Windows (I could use MacOS with Omnigraffle, but Macs are not available at my pay grade. Whatever). They pay me to work and be productive, and this means using Outlook/Teams, AD SSO integration with Edge, all the VPNs/network control/DLP agents. And luckily now I can use Linux subsystem in Windows, so I can work on the cli when I need to do something fancy. They don’t pay me to spend hours trying to find a way to work with their systems other than what’s supported.
On the topic at hand (bootloader issues). Never had a problem personally, but Iast time I did proper dual booting (on the same drive) was with Windows8.1. Now I have different drives, with the bios configured to boot from the drive with Linux. If I want to boot on Windows 10 I actually have to change the boot sequence. And even then there is grub (from an old dual boot setup).