[phkahler]

Completely agree. Just started a new job and was issued a new laptop with the latest MS stuff. Everything wants to be cloud based. The browser regularly has rendering glitches when scrolling a pdf. Little ads pop up for no apparent reason. Installed apps are just temporary unless you pay. It feels like a desktop designed by Facebook.

Having said that, aside from the pdf glitch I'd say it works very smoothly, exactly the way they intended.

[joveian]

I thought it was rather smooth too the first time I used it. Then I rebooted and the start menu was all messed up. Searched (from a web browser on a different system; not much documentation when you use it offline but at least no ads) and reason was... I changed the time. Somehow that reverted some of my changes to the start menu. Maybe a year or a bit more later, after I had arranged a few hundred program icons, the start menu just stopped working entirely and none of the suggested fixes I could find would help (except the one to completely reset the start menu and undo all the customization). But at least that led me to discover the super useful start right click menu (that still worked). Plus some strange audio issues with some programs that got much better in 2004 but still occasionally present. Plus the text entry box to search the app list to uninstall takes several seconds to even let you enter text (if you start earlier it seems random if it appears or not). And I'm fairly sure a few more such issues as well, so you are luckly if it is smooth for you.

But yeah, it does have a nice streamlined feel to it that I apprecitate (way better than the default Ubuntu interface IMO) except for the obviously hostile aspects. And the streamlined feel does really enhance the feel of how intentional many of those hostile aspects are.