Look, I hate Windows; literally the only device I have that isn't Linux is my work laptop, and I purposefully leave it at the office. But this thread isn't the place to bring up Windows hate. Someone's trying to do a good thing with what they have, and, idk, doesn't seem the time or place to get converts ig.

The Windows 11 cope...

My reason is really simple: replacing Windows with Bazzite or whatever would be a lot of effort. If W11 ever bricks itself or does something hideously invasive (that I can't disable or opt out of) then it becomes less of an effort than maintaining the status quo, and thus switching becomes the obvious choice.

One of us!

I'm gonna piggyback off of this to remind everyone to install OpenSnitch and go through the iinitial and super-tedious approve/deny outgoing connections.

there's stuff on linux that, despite being perfectly offline capable and having turned off everything related to clown sync and remote check this and that, still phones home.

I used to sell pcs at Sears back the day. There was this one weird family I sold a 486DX to and the wanted just one more peripheral..a scanner. You could return entire pc purchases at Sears up to 3 years later depending on how loud you'd yell... Us sales guys would lose the commission and we were straight commission those days so I got into pcs by keeping my stuff sold. They had to have a scanner and I went out to support ... Every trick in the book with himem and config..memory optimizers ... Couldn't get that IRQ .. all my tech buds tried too. Finally I gave them a free (pre release cus we had it for weeks) copy of win 95 all set up - because it could assign all those resources effortlessly without one text file. Windows wasn't always purely evil.

Windows XP was the best for me.

There are still issues with reliability and user friendliness. As a power casual, there were too many jagged edges to let me feel good about daily driving Linux.

Something is very wrong with Zorin then.

Reliability and user friendliness are why I use linux. I work from home, I can't afford to have a computer not be reliable. Its why I use linux, it works, it doesnt change unless I do. As for user friendliness, windows is extremely hostile to decent work flows. It is user unfriendly.

Linux will someday be our solution to the Microsoft problem, but that year hasn’t yet arrived.

It arrived for me about 20 years ago. Your statement is ridiculous today.

This is my current solution too, while Win10's extended support period lasts... I really hope Adobe will support Linux (or a working emulator is made) by the time I need to leave Win10, because I don't want to touch Win11 with an 11-foot pole lol

I'd recommend putting more time into switching to Linux instead of pirating Enterprise versions of Windows and then installing and configuring a bunch of third-party software that is supposed to stop Microsoft from doing all the Microsoft things we don't like. That seems like it's a lot of work and effort too, plus they are actively hostile towards users instead of just "not ready".

There is zero reason to use Windows now.

Apparently accessability tools are still lacking for people with vision impairments compared to windows, especially on Wayland.

zero for you perhaps, but I unfortunately need Adobe InDesign and Illustrator (and Photoshop but that has more alternatives), or similar software that has the many professional features I use

also need my games and mods to run on Linux... currently ProtonDB says my Steam library is 51% platinum and gold, and then I haven't even addressed older or online games

You're delusional (saying this as a long time tech support for various new Linux users)