Back when I first used a computer we were told if it has ads and pop ups constantly then you have installed a virus. Try using a fresh install of windows....

Poor workflow. Switching applications is horrible if you have 4 windows open in one desktop. Even gnome is far better at that.

Because it makes doing the things I want to do with a computer difficult and annoying.

Warning, no technical stuff, only creed:

I don't hate Windows in and off itself. For me it represents my first contact with a computer and influences my choice of UI to this day.

I hate what it stands for, which for me is something I call "gated computing"; a restriction of access to computational power and abilities. It turns a machine with near limitless potential, like watching cat videos, sharing how to best build bridges or calculating the bygone cycles of the moon, to a machine that maliciously distracts people while giving a selected few the power of watching over them with ever changing objectives as to why they watch them.

Windows, like few others, eased people into thinking that that was the right way to use a computer all along.

That is why I hate it.

Because it's a tool by one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, corporation ever made. It's nothing more than a way to lock-in users deeper in an ecosystem of extortion and learned helplessness.

Through Windows, computer users discover that they have a black box at work and then at home. It is NOT their computer. It is a computer that they are allowed to use a certain way. This then is extended in a myriad of ways, through other tools, e.g mobile phone, and services, e.g Office360, reinforcing that behavior. It becomes a second nature to the point that computer users dare not even imagine HOW they want to use a computer. Instead they buy whatever they are allowed to consume.

I do not care for Windows as an OS, I absolutely do HATE it though as a vehicle for cognitive enslavement. I do so keeping in mind the history of the company that made it. It is not a repeated random process, it's a strategy. This is what I find disgusting.

Because my experience is always the exact opposite of yours. Windows has never been convenient for me, it always does random shit, and stuff just suddenly stops working because fuck you that's why. For example, I have a Windows computer at work to build and test the games I work on, this week it decided that it won't use more than 20% of the CPU for building the latest game, there's no other bottleneck, temperature is stable at 60°C, disks have space, and most importantly, other games compile just fine, it's just the one I'm actively working currently that doesn't. And it's not an issue in the code either since I'm the only person in the company experiencing this. And, this is the important part, I can't do anything about it, because no one knows why Windows decided to do that, so there's nothing anyone can do. On Linux when you have an issue there's an explanation, and someone with enough experience will find it quickly, on Windows you can be the world's expert and still the OS will just decide to nope the fuck out.

A few things (disclaimer, I‘m both a Linux and mac user. Linux on my gaming machine, mac on my work machines):

• Privacy is a big factor. Microsofts track record is bad, even among non FOSS companies.

• Bloatware and Ads. Microsofts insistence on pushing OneDrive, Edge, 365 and bing are annoying to say the least. Why do they think I’m going to change my mind about that after a minor update?

• The UX is less than stellar. Why does the OS have 4 different UI styles for different programs that sometimes even do almost the same thing but not entirely, so you’ll have to use both versions?

• It’s almost impossible for me to keep my desktop tidy short of not using it. I’m dependent on macOS stack feature. On Linux I never had enough random files for it to be a problem.

In short, Windows just annoys me. While Linux and macOS go out of my way and let me just do my stuff, Windows just constantly pulling my attention away from what I advertised want to do and that was even when I was using my PC solely as a gaming machine.

Edit: formatting

sudo su is a bad idea. sudo -iu is better for ACLs and avoids the potential security gap.

I don't think the ability to destroy your entire system by one command is a good thing for a desktop operating system. On Linux random program with root rights can bring down your entire system by one poorly written script, but Windows at least has multiple mechanisms in place to prevent that.

I don't hate Windows for work. On the clock, I am balls deep in their ecosystem and I can't say that it's not working. However, that's probably because I get it mostly set-up by IT!

Casual reminder that on Windows, it's the norm to go fetch packages from the fucking internet using a web browser and give them root access to your system, including drivers...
A lot of settings are still scattered as well, with stuff randomly hidden away, completely unconfigurable or named so it's not at all clear what it even does.

For everyday stuff like browsing, I totally do not see why people would want to use Windows.

If it wasn't for (some) ((multiplayer)) games and other Windows-only software, I wouldn't recommend this OS to anyone at this point.

I hate windows 11, because it's bad. Installing drivers is annoying, removing the ads and de-bloating a PAID operating system is just ridiculous. It's also unstable, random crashes galore, uses a ton of system resources and sleep doesn't work. As you mentioned yourself it's also a privacy nightmare. But that's not all of my reasons for hating windows...

• Horrible CLI experience, can't get any work done without needing to go through 15 different menus to find some arcane setting to adjust simple things like global variables. Powershell also has the habit of randomly forgetting that certain commands exist, I am aware it's probably me doing something wrong there, but I do not care enough to figure it out, to me it just doesn't work.

• Horrendous laptop experience. 1:1 touch pad gestures? Smooth animations? A workflow that makes sense? Not on windows! And yk, sleep doesn't work.

• WORSE gaming performance on AMD graphics cards. Yep, this has been the case ever since I switched to AMD a few years ago and despite all their driver updates, I still get a much better performance in games on linux through wine. This is just ignoring the fact that radeon software on windows is a piece of fcking garbage that likes randomly crashing and then uninstalling itself.

• Virtualization is bad. No KVM = bad for me... It's just slower on windows and you can't do fun stuff like GPU passtrough.

• I can't even fcking install windows 11 without doing ridicuous hacks to bypass the secure boot/TPM/other garbage.

• No app store/normal package manager. Winget sucks... it just does. Yes, it's better than nothing, no, it's not good... Same goes for chocolatey. It's nice, but it's just not that good.

Fundamentally, there are many reasons... A lot of which I've listed, to dislike windows. And I'm not a Linux elitist, my main work machine is a Mac, I just use what works best and windows just... doesn't. It's been enshittified beyond belief and even ignoring the enshittification, there are things that fundamentally prevent me from liking/using windows for anything more than a piracy machine... As that's the one thing that's easier on windows.

Because the only redeeming quality of Windows is the fact a lot of software works on Windows and only on Windows, which is also exactly the problem with Windows. It's great WINE can exist, but not all platforms support WINE, and as an OpenBSD user first and foremost it means I can't play many of my favorite games on my preferred platform.

Ultimately, Windows sucks and is a standard because our society puts corporate greed and thieves like Microsoft above superior projects; and even if Microsoft were firebombed off the planet tomorrow, they're just a symptom of the problem, and it's only be so long until another thief steps into Microsoft's position and ruins everything again.

Because windows is inconvenient for me.

Nothing works as I expect it, terminal takes ages to open, everything lags like shit, annoying popups everywhere, every setting is hidden behind ten thousand menus, subpar packaging system, explorer crashes every so often, PATH is hard to access and modify, takes a PHD to install a raw compiler without visual studio, you can forget about shortcut system cus even with autohotkey it's a pain.

(Talking about permissions) Why do I have to write names of users from the ground and then click button "check if it actually exists" in a fucking gui? Couldn't there be a drop down list?

If you ever want to modify the windows iso image or make an automated script without using online services you're just done mate. There's nifty surprises like special software which name I so conveniently forgot (God bless) that can open the file image contained inside the iso image, but if that inner image has wrong format you have to spend time converting it. Then you'll see some fucking insane shit in front of you, where you need to drag objects from a drop down list into different categories that have random ass names and not at all simple to understand even after reading official documentation. Oh you think that's all? You can drop same objects into different categories and they will do different shit. I took TWO WEEKS WORTH OF CLASSES to work with that software and I ALREADY DONT REMEMBER JACK.

Then there's utterly long startup times even on ssds, colemak dh mod basically doesn't exist... And that's all I could remember out the top of my head.

The only redeeming quality I'd say, is having a very simple setup for Japanese and Chinese IME. On arch KDE it took me awhile to set up fcitx with mozc the first time around.

The "we know better than you" attitude Microsoft has. They've very slowly removed more and more power user functionality. Almost every customization has to be hacked in with a group policy or registry edit now, or by outright replacing explorer.exe

I genuinely don't find Windows easier to use. And troubleshooting Windows problems is a friggin' nightmare compared to Linux.

Great answers already, I'll not repeat them. One thing I want to mention though is the interoperability of the Linux applications. Things work together well. With Windows (up to 10 at least, I haven't used windows much in the last years) applications are mostly their own silo. In KDE it's quite fluent. E.g. gwenview, the image viewer offers to open an image in krita, gimp, etc. It also offers an option to add a folder to the "places" list in dolphin (the file manager). Dolphin lets you quickly (F4) open and close a terminal at the current folder within its window. Small things like these make the system feel coherent.

The other big thing for me is the plethora of great apps you have out of the box. And the ease to install new ones without worrying whether you are the product.

Proprietary software is a security risk, especially for US companies that can be legally served NSLs

Because I don't sit down at my Linux destop and feel like the product. There's no ads or suggestions or popups or apps installing themselves or shit copying my files around in ways I didn't really want or AI bullshit or anything even remotely suggesting I buy more shit, just... whatever the fuck it is I was intending to do.

The value in not having my computer act like a damn slot machine trying to get me to insert more quarters is, frankly, immense.

Cool operating system bro. Does it run KDE?

I like being in control of my computer.

Windows and Android have this attitude where they decide how you want to use your device and block customisation. And the fact that they feel entitled to be able to change how your device looks and feels without warning or permission is something that's deeply uncomfortable to me. There's also this feeling of not knowing what my device is actually doing, and how much of my data it is actually collecting.

With Windows, there's also a lot of small papercuts that make it annoying to use (and that my Windows friends don't seem to understand):

• Lack of middle click paste.
• Lack of the ability to drag windows using "alt".
• You can't turn off the window previews in the task bar.
• You can't disconnect from a wired network connection from the connections list.
• Sometimes the computer just restarts on its own for fun.
• Finding settings is a pain because they keep adding new settings menus.
• Whatever garbage the start menu is doing nowadays.
• Installing software and drivers is a pain.
• The attitude that you have to download (or buy!) third party software for core features that should be included in the OS.
• It doesn't support my keyboard layout, and the editor for making new layouts is terrible.
• The bitlocker password entry doesn't respect your keyboard layout. Or clear the entry when you get it wrong.
• Windows licenses are a pain to manage.
• Managing the bootloader just sucks.
• The registry just kinda sucks compared to dconf and/or text config files.
• Font rendering is ugly, imo.
• I don't care about edge, fuck off with that shit.
• I can't change the volume by using the scroll wheel.
• Launching a pinned app on the task bar causes all the other pinned apps to shift around so I misclick.
• Device letters are not stable if you add or remove devices.
• It just resets settings sometimes, because why not?
• It can't be installed to a partition that isn't the first partition on the disk. This is not mentioned anywhere, nor is the error useful.
• It's just bad for developing on, due to lack of tooling.

... Whew I ranted for a while there, didn't I? Yeah, I dual boot Windows for the games that either don't run under protonwine or the devs want to add a rootkit to.

Installing updates... Do not turn off your computer

Aside from all the usual points that everyone else has already made: automation. Scripting stuff on Linux is relatively simple, trying to fuck about with powershell or work around a tool that's GUI-only is infuriating.

It just.. lacks features? I couldn't use ZFS or Btrfs, FDE requires third-party software (veracrypt) and lots of other things that I see as standard system utilities (think ssh, git etc.) are not available on a fresh install. And then you're supposed to download and install .exe files from the internet? Since microsoft controls what goes in the windows store, that could provide the same experience as your distro's repositories. But again, most things you want aren't there, and you can't even trust the things that are there. For some reason, a billion dollar company cannot curate a software repository of the same quality as the ones maintained by unpaid volunteers in the Linux world.

So yeah, I think it's just not there yet. Maybe in a few years windows will be a viable alternative for desktop systems.

I don't hate Windows, I don't care about it. I don't use it.

Just this weekend I had the pleasure of installing Win 10 on a blank disk. The install went ok, but then it bothered me logging into the MS Account. After cursing for a while and since it wasn't my PC, I gave in. I know I can fight it, but it's not worth it here. Then it continued trying to get me to consent to all kinds of shit. NO, I DON'T WANT FUCKING OFFICE AND I DON'T WANT MY FILES IN ONEDRIVE you assholes!

Then it forces me to choose a PIN for "secure login". DUDE! That motherfucking PC is used for a bit of office work and gaming. Just let these poor people boot up the machine and use it! 0000? Too simple. 1234 too. Fuck you, MS. Ok, random PIN and a sticky note it is, asshats.

Anyway, after getting it to fuck off, I continue to the desktop. Oh wow, 10 updates and a ton of missing drivers? It's a fresh install! What the fuck did it install?! Of course the installation of all these updates takes an hour and countless restarts... AFTER A FRESH INSTALL! Not even my overblown super slow Ubuntu server takes that long for updates; and that runs on a HDD not a SSD like that PC I set up.

But wait. One update failed. Why? Ah, the rescue partition is too small.... THE ONE THAT DUMB SON-OF-BITCH CREATED ON ITS OWN AS PART OF THE INSTALL! How to fix? Ah, execute a bunch of commandline foo with diskpart and other tools. Wait, isn't that exactly the kind of shit that Windows fans laugh about when looking down on us Linux nerds?!

So ... ugh .... just one simple anecdote of why Windows can fuck off.

I honest to god find Linux easier to use. Though it's maybe because the most used programs on my laptop are neovim, gcc and rust compiler and Firefox . And I shit you not, Microsoft purposefully slowed down the Firefox browser I installed from their store.

Plus I like using a tiling window manager when coding, now in Linux I have 500 options. On windows I get a middle finger and a dedicated nsa/fbi agent. Whats not to hate?

I'm the kind of user that cares about function over form, so everything in Windows 11 just annoyed me. Mainly because it was just changes in design that required me to reorient and to learn to use again with no good reason.
I still use Windows at work just because our whole dev stack is on Windows. And every new design change just gets in my way. An OS should enable me do the things that I need and want, it should move out of my way. Sure I've added some hacks to restore the functionality I was used to. But the fact that I need to fight the OS to bring back context menus annoys me to no end.

Also, as a dev, I find many things easier done on Linux that Windows, mainly because it just has a better CLI support. It's not as bad now with Windows terminal, winget and other improvements (dotnet having a proper CLI interface), however I still mostly use git-bash for common stuff like searching the file system. Not to mention that for something like docker I basically just need WSL.

Honestly, privacy and freedom of choice alone is why I switched back.

I will give windows credit, it's definitely better than any other platform out there when it comes to support and it is really nice just having things "just work". I went relatively 8 years having almost zero issues with gaming with the exception of my graphics driver which was a fault of AMD not necessarily Microsoft. All I would have to do is install a program maybe restart the computer and then run the program the way I went. With my current system I can't even guarantee if the software I want to use will work because the ecosystem is geared towards Microsoft so every product out there is Microsoft first Unix if we get around to it.

My only reason for switching was the lack of choice I was getting. While I never had to restart for updates because it automatically updated nightly when I turned it off so it was very non-invasive, the fact that I I wasn't trusted enough with my computer to be able to turn those updates completely off if I wanted to, on top of the fact that every major update seemed to hard push the office suite, and every update seemed to respect my privacy less and less was already putting me on the edge of switching every time that I had it happened to me.

But the recent rumor wave that was going through that Windows 10 when it reached end of life wasn't going to be the same way that every other OS that they've had has been where they will release security updates past closing and instead they're going to open the business only support tier to your Standard customer and offer Windows 10 at a subscription price instead, on top of the fact that Windows 11 wasn't going to support how I wanted to set my computer up without having to reinstall it anyway, I just took the plunge and went back to Linux. Overall it has been enjoyable, but I really do miss the ease of being able to just install something and have it work that comes with being in the dominant ecosystem. That being said, It is nice not having to worry about what a mega company thinks I should run the computers that I paid for, built, and set up myself.

I swapped away from Windows about a year and a half ago. The last straw was them sticking ads in the OS. And from everything I've heard, they continue to boil the frog; they continue to add more and more telemetry and unasked for "features" and bloat the system more and more and more with every update. Even my own parents are growing tired of Windows; it's a clunky, poorly optimized operating system that's positively frustrating to use.

I will concede that not everything that runs on Windows will run on Linux. It's true. But I severely disagree that Windows is "easier to use." Of course, when you grow up on Windows, Linux has a learning curve. It's different OS. But once I got past that? Nah, Linux is far easier and more intuitive in most cases.

Installing programs? Open your software manager and click a button.

Playing video games? Open Steam or Lutris and click a button. Occasionally you might need to tweak things, but you have to do the same on Windows sometimes, especially for older games!

I could go on but those are the biggest two examples that come to mind immediately.

As to another point you made, I personally gave up almost nothing. Destiny 2 and League of Legends don't work, but I quit league before fgsh added Vanguard and neither of these games want me. That isn't my fault, and it isn't a short coming in Linux's fault, it's the devs being assholes.

In spite of this, I do acknowledge some people would have to give up more than me, and for some people that's too much, and that's valid! I hope one day they truly get a choice.

Each time I tell this story, I try to make it shorter and more terse.

Circa 2012 or 2013 I bought a Raspberry Pi as part of my ham radio hobby. With that I learned a little bit of Python and Bash, learned to type sudo etc, and kinda liked what I saw. Meanwhile, my Win 7 laptop died right as I was going back to school, so I bought a new laptop. This new laptop had two problems: 1. it came with Windows 8.1 and 2. it was a lemon. For most of the first semester going back to school I had no reliable laptop. The only modern supported computer I had was that Raspberry Pi. And for most of a semester that's what I did school assignments and email on until I finally bullied Dell into replacing that lemon Inspiron they sold me outright.

So by the time I got a reliable x86 laptop in hand, Linux felt more normal to me than Win 8.1 did. So I fully switched.

That was 10 years ago now, and for the last decade I've heard Windows users do nothing but piss and moan about the new holes Microsoft has found to fuck them in.

I don't know if I "hate" Windows but more like "I'm done dealing it." I might come and use it time to time, but only when absolutely necessary, and the mental capacity to remove things I don't need and make sure its removed.

After decades of user interfaces and internet access, we’re making things worse rather than better.

Someone at Microsoft realized that hardware will speed up, hiding the fact that the OS is getting bloated and riddled with code that doesn’t directly benefit the user.

The value Windows provides isn’t great enough to deal with this state any longer. In fact, my experience shows it’s slower and just as buggy.

We have technology available to improve experiences, let’s not mix it with profit incentives for once.