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Yeah, Windows tries to constantly trick you into using a Microsoft account and storing your Desktop, Documents, etc in OneDrive online. The reason is simple: money. When you inevitably run out of space, you can't save anything else. And you can no longer use your linked Hotmail account. I had to explain to my Dad's 80+ year old neighbor why she couldn't email photos with her kids and then try and fix the messed up Windows settings to get her back working again. This type of behavior in software is honestly evil.

It is interesting because in many ways Apple does the same thing with Mac. They push iCloud fairly heavily.

But it feels like when you need to disable it or whatever it's not jumping through hoops. If I want to disable iCloud Drive on my Mac, as long as I wasn't working out of iCloud Drive things just keep working as expected.

It is though. Take the example of the Books app on iOS. If you enable iCloud, it uploads third-party documents and books into its cloud - so far so good. If you discontinue iCloud (or even just disable the annoying upload-and-delete-local-copy for the Books app), every one of your books disappears, being held hostage by Apple. You literally have to then copy every single book that you bought elsewhere into the Books app again.

This should simply be illegal. Fraud.

Just as a counterpoint, the same games run better for me on the Linux/proton side of the same hardware. Haven't had any real issues with non-steam games either on my Linux desktop or my steam deck.

It's interesting to note how different the experience of different users is. Makes me curious what part of the stack is causing such massively divergent outcomes. Graphics driver? Window manager? Distro defaults?

Tough issue to debug. I hope someone over at Valve is studying it so the Linux experience can become better for more people.

So my only real experience with linux gaming is with SteamOS and Proton.

A big example of a game that I had to jump through hoops (and just gave up and switched to Windows) was Kingdom Hearts. FF14 (not through Steam) was another example of a game that I got to work fairly well, but the steps to get it working was weird and meant I lost the syncing the real launcher had.

However I do want to mention that I actually did some comparisons, and at least on my steam deck I got better battery life and performance on games running on Windows 10 LTS vs the same games running on SteamOS.

I didn't do extensive testing, but enough to make the choice fairly easy and remove any compatibility issues.

The battery life one is interesting. I haven't installed windows on my Deck, but I would certainly expect that it wouldn't be anywhere near as good at managing the battery and hardware performance. That's fascinating.

Personally I've had way more trouble on the windows side, where the NVIDIA driver regularly breaks, causes wacky performance and screen tearing issues. There have been a few games where linux performance was notably worse, but mostly EA type things that eventually got fixed.

KH is annoying, what's REALLY annoying is its not the GAME that doesn't work well with proton. It's the DRM and the launchers. You can get the Epic store versions to work but it is a bit fiddly. For KH 1.5+ 2.5 you have bypass the launcher and go to the eye directly.

Additionally, LTSC is a lifeline that was designed to eventually run-out. The individuals that rely on it are in for a rude awakening when the LTS period expires. Microsoft has no interest in catering to you; they want enterprise users on metered B2B solutions, and individuals on their ad-ridden "Home" OS. If you feel insulted, the best they'll offer you is the option to buy a "Pro" license and feel even worse about yourself.

If it works, it works. But LTSC users are like that meme of the smug guy on a plank, aiming at the dude who's keeping them from falling off a cliff.

I don't understand why you are making such a critical reply. LTS versions of operating systems have been a standard thing for years. Even some Linux distros do it (did? do they still).

Also a simple google search would have shown otherwise. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/w... Windows 11 LTSC was announced for next year.

Given how Windows 10 LSTC differed strongly from all of the crap they added to normal 10, right now I am leaning towards that Windows 11 will likely follow a similar cut down version of Windows without all of the crap.

LTSC isn't going away, at least not right now. When it does then we can talk about Linux again but right now there is a perfectly valid option without any compatibility issues.

But how do you get an LTSC license for Windows as an individual?

This has happened to me and it’s causing me a lot of headaches. Haven’t found a solution yet as I’ve not had the energy to figure it out.

I wish I could remember exactly what I found to help you.

But if I remember correctly I found a script to remove OneDrive that would first download all of the files locally.

This sounds nightmarish. One of many reasons I refuse to sign into my Outlook account on Windows, I just know they'll use the excuse of "integration" to completely fuck up my computer with cloud bullshit. I want what's on my computer to stay on my computer, dammit.

I agree, actually it’s quite a turning point for me because I’ve always used Windows and have tried to persevere with Windows 11, but more often than not I’m feeling let down by it.

> Apparently it just moved the entire user directory (or something like that) to OneDrive and most of his files were not local

Something similar happened to my father-in-law. He called one day saying that every time he saved a file in Word, he couldn’t find it again later. It ended up being that either all his files were saving into OneDrive but the “Documents” shortcut in Explorer was the local directory, or vice versa. That was also my first experience with the god awful Save dialog in recent versions of Office.

You can’t just upend where something as critical as where someone’s files end up, especially not for non-technical users. It’s absurdly bad.

The only reason I haven't switched to Linux as a daily driver yet is HDR. Once Linux gets HDR support I'm out. Don't care what garbage I have to deal with in the OS. Windows is freaking awful.