I was considering returning to Windows, but when I ran Windows in a virtual machine, I was reminded exactly why I switched to Linux in the first place
So I've been a Linux user since April 1, 2025. At first I started with mint xfce because it was light, simple and beginner-friendly (despite not having a low-spec machine, I still like lightweight OS). But xfce felt too unpolished and this might sound dumb but I disliked the lack of desktop widgets to see my RAM usage and disk usage etc. So I went to mint cinnamon, which I actually loved, worked perfectly for most of the time. Then I went to raw debian since I wanted even more lightweight, but eventually got tired of that not being beginner-friendly and running into REALLY technical issues. Then I went back to mint cinnamon and loved it again. But the weakness of that for me was some games having strange issues like freezing, which was annoying and I couldn't find a fix.
After this, I decided to go with something more "works out of the box", specifically with gaming. I was tired of tinkering and I just wanted stuff to work, especially games. So I went to Bazzite, and I enjoyed it. But there was still an issue, then the downsides of Linux became even more apparent to me, really struggling with some stuff that would've been a single click on Windows. I know it's unfair to compare Linux with Windows for this since Linux is not intended to be a 1:1 replacement for Windows. However, I was getting tired of this after 1 year and 1 month of Linux usage, yet I tolerated it because Linux was at least not plagued by poor business decisions.
Then I had a modding tool for a game completely refusing to work on Linux, even with proton. Because of a file directory incompatibility issue. I also wondered "What if I went back to Windows? I mean I hate Microsoft but at least everything would be familiar, simple." Well, then, just to use this modding tool, I decided to run a virtual machine of Windows 10.
Immediately, it struck to me exactly why I went to Linux in the first place. And somehow, Windows had gotten even worse... Just as I began installing it in the virtual machine, Cortana has an unskippable cutscene! It was SO annoying, and I was feeling really mad at Microslop. Oh then the installation drags on even longer and longer, forces me to register with an email! And I'm like "Cmon, I really don't care, just get to the f-ing point. I just wanna use my modding tool." It dragged on and on, and when I got to the desktop, all these intrusive apps, bloatware... Yeah, it seems I had forgotten the pain of Windows. It made me love Linux more, even though Linux sometimes annoys me because of incompatibility issues or strange bugs I can't solve for the life of me... At the end of the day, it's far better than dealing with a corporate monopoly.
So then I had a complete picture on my head, "Linux is non-intrusive, not ran by an evil corp and has more freedom... But it's less familiar and sometimes harder to do things out of box. Windows is convenient, simple, familiar, but it's ran by an evil corp and full of forced AI features, forced logging in, spyware..."
Yeah, Windows has it's upsides. But for me, I don't think the upsides are worth it. I will stay on Linux, If Windows 7 still had new versions of hardware and apps run on it though, I would use that instead of Linux. Does this mean Microsoft lost a customer? No, because Microsoft's actual customers are their shareholders.