The positive experience of Microsoft with OSS hasn't yet translated in a positive experience with Windows.
Windows is still a closed platform, with several issues, like wasting disk space, degrading performance over months, frequent reboots interrupting work in progress and forcing software to be reopened, losing state, too much information on the screen, UI inconsistencies e.g. control panel and 3 different consoles (PowerShell, MSDOS, Bash), forced UI patterns, etc.
Can confirm that despite my best efforts I just can't abide using Windows long-term. I have lots of games that are Windows-only, and after accidentally hosing my dual-boot Linux partition I've been honestly trying to use Windows alone for over a year, and the experience is increasingly frustrating, so pardon the following rant:
The Windows Antimalware service consistently pegs my CPU at 35%, and the service cannot be stopped. Trying to kill it in task manager gives you "permission denied", even if you run task manager as admin. There's an entry for it in the service manager interface, but any settings that would effectively disable it are apparently ignored; there is no evident effect. Registry hacking has been fruitless. The only thing that almost works is to go into the Windows Defender interface and flip the "realtime protection" switch, at which point the service will eventually stop itself up to half an hour later, and then undo the switch and turn itself back on again the next day; I can tell when this has happened because I can hear my fans spinning up from across the room. There's really no better way for Microsoft to drive home how little control I have over my own computer.
And this isn't the only thing. The Windows store is AFAICT pointless; even trying to install Microsoft software like Skype installs some weird limited version that tells you to manually install actual Skype if you want all the program's features. The fact that it keeps reinstalling Candy Crush shovelware lumps Microsoft in with scummy OEMs. You can't disable Cortana without also disabling the OS's search features. Disabling the ads in the start menu, lock screen, notifications pane, search interface, and god knows where else all require digging through different menus to flip different preferences. It endlessly pesters you to use Edge over any other browser and has the gall to reset your browser preference to Edge randomly after updates.
So I can applaud Microsoft for their OSS work, but Windows really is just thoroughly aggravating. Desktop Linux is also thoroughly aggravating, but at least when it is, I know it's usually my fault, and I know it can be fixed.
Ouch, thank you for writing that all out. I've been using MacOS for decades now and really just want to change it up. Still don't think the Linux desktop is quite there, but maybe I'll just buy a used Thinkpad and give it a real shot as my full-time work machine.
Windows is still a closed platform, with several issues, like wasting disk space, degrading performance over months, frequent reboots interrupting work in progress and forcing software to be reopened, losing state, too much information on the screen, UI inconsistencies e.g. control panel and 3 different consoles (PowerShell, MSDOS, Bash), forced UI patterns, etc.