[gryf]

I recently bought a Lenovo windows PC to run some software I needed that was windows only. It shipped with windows 11 Pro. Figured it wasn't going to be any worse than the win 10 Pro I have to eat on my corp laptop. So I fired it up and was disappointed and though all the crapware was vendor installed. So I did a clean install of windows 11 pro from microsoft. Actually it was WORSE than the vendor shipped version.

It is supposed to be a professional operating system but really you're being force fed dog shit because you have no choice.

I spent a couple of weeks migrating all my stuff away and will sell the bloody thing on ebay when I get around to it.

[RajT88]

So - my Win11 journey has been spotty.

I'll spare you the details of my work machines.

But, I bought an Aya Neo as a mobile gaming PC, which never worked right with Win10. Like, really fucking weird shit that should never happen. External keyboards and mice not being able to load a driver kind of weird shit. I considered doing a fresh install of Win10, but decided, hey, Maybe I'll upgrade it to Win10 Pro via my ample MSDN licenses I get through work, and then do the Win11 upgrade.

Worked like a charm. Fixed every issue I had. Who knows why!

Anyways.

Win11 isn't bad after a year+. The stuff that gets in the way is the dumb shit they do with Windows Explorer to move options out of the way for power users. Think: All the cool shit you have set up when you right-click on something in Explorer.

I have also turned off all the telemetry options using WPD. No ads anywhere, and some of the stuff which is built in is pretty great: Windows Terminal, Tabs in Windows Explorer.

I find it to be a mixed bag. I don't hate it. I still prefer Win10 so far, but far less so than a year ago when compatibility issues were there.

[rightbyte]

Registry hacking is a moving target. They will auto update you into "accepting" spyware again. You need Windows Enterprise to actually disable that stuff.

If I needed a Windows machine I would stick to 7. That feels like before MS went Google.

[RajT88]

Yeah sorry. I said Pro, but realized I used an Enterprise key.

[julianeon]

Lenovo Thinkpads are the gold standard for Linux laptops. So you could install Linux on it, since you've got it anyway.

[manchmalscott]

Given that their first sentence says they only bought the laptop to run windows only software, that probably isn't an option.

[gryf]

It’s a desktop and I’ve got a MacBook Pro already. I quite frankly despise Linux on the desktop after trying to use it yearly for the last 25 years. Server fine. Desktop no thanks.

[zephyr9]

Also OpenBSD.