I installed windows 11 in a VM on my Linux machine for some testing recently. You still have to agree to allow MS to sell your information about 5 times during setup, and you're rewarded with Candy Crush and Xbox apps in your startup menu. I don't know how people put up with it, honestly.
Professionals don't use the "designed to be cheap for OEMs to license" Windows versions.
A lot of comments are either using home or edu or whatever, or are running in restrictive environments like on a corporate network where your IT department controls everything.
I like Linux. I use mostly Gentoo. I also like BSD but I can never think of anything to use it for. It's so good it's boring, which is great for production, not my favorite to mess around on.
I never really liked Mac OS X. I liked OS7-9, though, even though there was no real multitasking no multi-user.
But my main desktop is Windows on the metal. I ran Windows in a GPU accelerated VM for four years or so, and that was fine too.
One can get Windows Pro licenses for peanuts on eBay. I've never understood those running Home! I've always been using Windows Insider, and it is way more stable than macOS beta releases, which are notoriously broken!
windows pro legitimate licenses (as opposed to leaked volume licensing keys like you get on ebay or the facebook ads) are $120-$180 in my experience, and realistically, if you don't want to be "the product" that's a fair price.
But even with all that being said, there's other ways to get Pro versions, if the home user experience is that frustrating. and it is, i know!
if you ever do buy a license key on ebay, do a web search for the key you get. If it comes back with any results, immediately email the seller and say "it didn't work, says it's in use" or whatever. Keep doing this till they give you one that doesn't come up on a search. Usually they'll just refund your money after 2 keys, sometimes with a nasty message. What they're doing is unethical, IMO; so if all you want is a potentially valid key, you might get it for free.
Those are legit volume licenses from reputable sellers. You don't get media; you don't get anything but a license code. Plus, I only use those at home, of course - I would never use such licenses for business!
