In my view, that's unfair to the early versions of Windows, at least up to Win7.
Sure, they were charging a hefty sum for the OS but it was the best choice for a home and even office user. They used some dirty tactics on the business side of things but the end user was never so blatantly abused. Nowadays, they still charge for the OS but you also get all these ads shoved in your face.
Wish I could convince my non programmer friends to switch to Linux.
Well, because they keep asking me how to log in after they forgot their password for their Live account. Or, how to keep using windows live mail, since it's been replaced by this Mail client, which is horrendous. Or, how they decided to drop support for older drivers and now, after getting Win11, they can't use their scanner.
And while trying to tackle that I am bombed with these ads, that propagate products which are expensive, or subpar or both.
I need to get the T-shirt that says "No, I will not fix your computer" :)
Yeah, but even when constricting this to close family of about 50 people, when you are the "computer guy", it's still difficult to do. Who can they turn to?
I mean, seriously, what is the point of changing the user experience to something completely different every 5 years or so? Even I have trouble keeping up, think of the 60, 70, 80 year olds (my father is 84, struggling using Win11, when he was fine using Win8).
MS created a user experience expectations and they abandon all of it in favor of Mac like user experience, that might be great for 20-something designers, but they throw away all their existing user base for it.
I use KDE. Still the best desktop for me (coming to Linux from Win7, not that I did not try others before actually switching).
