Presumably, you were already well aware just how much new technology and apps tend towards hostility and enshittification, given what you describe.. So why in the world would you have wired up your very home to be a "smart" home? Did you really expect the technology for such a juicy trove of user data so easily, parasitically collected through manipulation to ever have a chance in hell of not being just as awful as anything else?
Granted, not everyone cares about them.
The faster we can kill the Apple and Google store monopolies the faster we'll go back to having operating systems/phones that we can at least do something with.
We still have Linux for now, but as we know signed bootloaders present a very large risk.
Thankfully there is a fair number of Linux-first companies now, so I'm not that worried. It's a real business case now. Years ago there were none, you couldn't even buy a laptop without Windows.
In corporate, no manager cares about the operating system their employees use. Unless there's a significant drop in productivity by using Windows, no one will bother with the cost of switching to another OS.
In the private sector, most people buy their computers straight off the shelf, i.e. with Windows. Here at HN, we're tech enthusiasts, but out there those who know what "Debian with GNOME" means are very few, and the rest will at most complain a little about how Windows has become, but then they'll just continue to use it.
It's so necessary to the functioning of Windows 11 that it can be bypassed and Windows 11 works fine. Sure...
Who runs them if not people?
Decisions are still made by people. Even if Excel is used to calculate the decision trajectory, even if the trajectory is enforced by some law inside the corporation, it's still people who decide that they continue following the road, and it's still people who implement the decision.
Side note how's open office compatibility these days? Last time I tried it yeeears ago there were still compatibility problems that would have made group projects hard.
I observe that every few years Windows is completely changed. It’s a total hodgepodge of decades of crap. That’s the only thing you need to know.
Office compatibility still kind of sucks. It's very usable, but still quite a few papercuts. In my kids case though, Google Docs pretty much solves that problem so it's largely been a non-issue.
While Open Office still exists (and is being actively supported), LibreOffice (forked from OpenOffice fifteen years ago) gets more frequent updates, is more broadly used, and is widely preferred over OpenOffice these days.
I use it and it's a nice replacement for the Microsoft Office suite. In fact, I have Microsoft Office and prefer LibreOffice over it.
I suggest giving LibreOffice[0] a look. Many of the compatibility issues have been resolved and it works nicely.
Actively supported is a stretch. Look at these commits.
For using Teams, I'd recommend just using the web client. I did try installing the Microsoft native client for Linux, but all it seemed to do was open an empty window (i.e. not drawn in, so it showed what was under where it appeared) and wasn't at all functional. The web client seems to work, though I don't use it very often.
Since then I've mostly been at a job where Office is provided and rarely have need of it at home.
Don't bother. I would have said that I was "familiar with Windows", I used 3.11, NT 4.0, XP, Vista, and 10 to a lesser extent and my wife needed help with her work laptop. Honestly Windows 11 is significantly different and apparently hostile enough that I couldn't find anything.
For my other kids that don't care about that sort of stuff, even they have become very capable computer users. It's been easy for them to learn Windows and ChromeOS at school. I already see the same pattern of diving deeper developing with my youngest too.
One of the most rewarding things I've experienced as a parent is seeing the hacker spirit still very much alive.
Still this is the crux of the linux experience and why I still don't main it - having to read logs to understand why an Xbox controller doesn't work.
Or a million other things like this. Sure it keeps getting better, by a lot. But the number of rough edge cases still is an issue every time I try out lonux again after lots of people tell me "Today Linux is different" - they always tell me and I always find, no it's still a thing you will still need to go spelunking in tech wizardry to do things that mostly just works on some other mainstream OS, like macos or even windows.
For example, I have an AMD Radeon 6600 RX. Works great under Windows. Under Linux - and I've tried multiple distros - it's entirely unusable. The screen just flashes. I don't understand.
There were plenty of other "techy" things that older generations take for granted but kids aren't learning about unless parents show them because they are hidden behind modern OS/software interfaces and usually locked down to prevent discovery.
It's not there for me, it's for Microsoft to have a vehicle to point the OS AT ME.
Windows should be considered mental health hazard.
Only thing going on is maximising capital extraction from the moat they created. End users no longer matter as long as the numbers keep going up.
An upsell and way to justify their 3 trillion marketcap