I used windows from 3.1, NT, 95, 2000 until XP, at which point I switched to Linux for my main OS.
Obviously I used all the later versions of Windows too for work, but each version seemed worse and less usable (7 was ok I guess).
There are so many tiny quality of life things like being able to use auto hot key to macro my way around daily stuff or how the file explorer works in a way that feels more intuitive. The little thing of being able to win+shift+s and snip a part of the screen where it loads into the clipboard immediately and does not save to a file by default. I heart power toys so much especially fancy zones which I use extensively. I also do like customizing my start menu. I find building my native home brew apps for the OS to be more pleasant. I find the windows terminal to be a fabulous experience I couldn’t live without now. Wsl is a blessing where I have multiple OS’s which I need and they don’t bog the system down. All my games work fine. I just… I really love the OS and what it lets me do.
Other OS’s could probably do similar things (auto hot key is your final boss though) but I guess windows just clicks for me really really well.
Literally, the only things I’d change about it right now are the whole adware/spyware bit and making the file path work like it does in Unix based systems. Backslashes! Urgh.
I don't use touch in my main OS, but maybe I should consider it!
Wsl does look really useful too (although the one time I tried to use it failed because it didn't support shared memory yet).
EDIT: Backslashes argghhh! Agree strongly here. Would be nice to get away from drive letters too and have a unified file system.
I feel that MacOS tries very hard to hide the fact that it's Unix under the hood and tries to hide all the Unix directories.
As for hidden files, cmd + shift + . to show them.
I somehow did not know this. I just saw Applications, Library, System, and Users and figured it was something else.
> As for hidden files, cmd + shift + . to show them.
Ah, that would be why I didn't realize "Macintosh HD" was /.
But how was I supposed to know this? I just went through all the menus and I didn't see any options regarding hidden files and no references to the cmd+shift+. keyboard shortcut.
I use MacOS almost exclusively for work. Most of my file browsing is done via terminal, most of the docs I access are somewhere in the cloud. I don't really mess around with stuff on my mac and don't need to open finder often
I use windows for everything else. The nature of "everything else" implies that I have a lot more weird programs and files scattered about, that I often need to find somewhere in program files or my junk folder because the start menu doesn't find it
Linux? The fucking thing breaks down if you so much as look at it wrong. No reliability, zilch, nada, /dev/null. I don't trust Linux with anything mission critical, unless I'm paying someone monies to make sure my time isn't wasted (eg: Red Hat, Synology, Steam Deck).
MacOS? Sure, it's practical and kind of reliable, but that's about it. It's not versatile nor customizable. You need to subscribe to the One Apple Way(tm), going off the Way(tm) is a miserable experience. You also really need to fully immerse yourself in the Apple ecosystem to fully use MacOS.
iOS? Android? They are strictly consumption operating systems. They are practical and reliable for consuming content, but that's all they are good (and intended) for.
BSD? No.
So Windows is the only operating system that I can use to do everything I want to do on a computer, in the ways I want to do them, with the software I want, trusting my time will not be wasted on trivially stupid nonsense.
All my windows boxes in my house have suffered BSODs periodically, get stuck in update cycles, and need complete reinstallation around once every year or two to remain stable. Error messages are cryptic and unhelpful. Logs are lacking.
My linux boxes almost never lock up, errors are resolvable and logs are better. The issues I've had were trivial to fix. Obviously I use hardware on which Linux is known to run well. I have run the same OS and updated it in place for years without any problems.
Same thing on Windows takes about half a day for me, and involves hunting for drivers and so on...
Maybe much is simply what you are used to.
From the mention of Steam Deck I'm going to guess most of the "breaks down if you so much as look at it wrong" is from graphics related stuff?
Or maybe using Ubuntu? When I stopped using Ubuntu the bug reporter came up often and quickly crashed.
However I've been using NixOS for many years now and had nearly no stability issues. The one I can remember I just rebooted and went to an old generation.
Before that I was using Debian and also had no issues, but their packages were outdated.
> So Windows is the only operating system that I can use to do everything I want to do on a computer, in the ways I want to do them, with the software I want, trusting my time will not be wasted on trivially stupid nonsense.
s/Windows/Linux or perhaps even s/Windows/NixOS for me :)
Edit:// to be more precise I use Ubuntu LTS on servers because it's stable and runs everything. But as soon as we get graphical there are better choices
And that's just the shell.
What, where and how Windows can do something for you depends entirely on what you install and how you configure everything. Windows is a blank canvas.