Dedoimedo

>> if you think that would be an acceptable excuse

> This is the Is/Aught Fallacy. I'm explaining how things ARE you're confusing it with me saying it's how things SHOULD BE. In other words, it's a statement of fact, not an "excuse".

No, instead of accepting the authors experiences as described you came up with a contrived scenario that involves the author not knowing how to use a computer, but somehow being a power user. Then you said that was probably what happened, before moving on to claim that the author isn't in the target audience for windows anyway.

Explaining how things are would not include dismissing the original criticisms as untrue.

>> windows will HAPPILY overwrite your file preferences when it installs updates

> Do you have evidence of this?

Yes I just read a great article that mentions one persons experience with Windows doing exactly that, you can find it here: https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/windows-11-june-2026-results.html

I feel like the Elementary folks have a lot of the right ideas about how to build a desktop OS and a third-party software ecosystem around it. (In particular: They have a HIG, and seem to make an effort to make their platform appealing for developers.) But it sounds like they struggle with execution in some ways:

https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/elementary-0-4-loki-again.html

I haven't tried Elementary, but I've tried a lot of distros, and I always come back to Ubuntu because it comes the closest to just working. (It doesn't do as well as MacOS or Windows in the 'just working' department, in my experience (let the flames begin!), but it does pretty well, and better than any other Linux-based OS I've tried.)

And although reliable statistics seem to be hard to come by, my impression is that Ubuntu is the most popular Linux-based desktop OS by a pretty wide margin.

> I like MacOS. I liked the old Unity. I like Gnome 3 except for the fact that it's consumes a lot of resources. I shy away from KDE even though I hear it's now more efficient because it reminds me of Vista from certain angles.

Same. Definitely don't like gnome/gnome-shell 3+ dropping the global menu, featuring a useless file picker, and overall just wasting a lot of space on my favourite notebook sizes of 13.3" and 14", though preferring dark themes I could see that gnome maybe wanted to get rid of those cheesy non-scaling, always-black-on-white icon menus as leftovers from the 90s. Regarding KDE (Plasma) though, I've learned you can customize the hell out of it to get back most of gnome 2 + Unity [1], so that's something I'm going to try next when I get around to it.

[1]: https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/plasma-look-like-unity.html

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/unity.html

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gnome-3.html

Same guy, takes the words out of my mouth in both cases.

Worth mentioning is that they have, admittedly, made a great deal of progress. Unity isn't the buggy mess that it was back a couple of major releases ago, which renders moot a good deal of the author's complaints.

I could still do without the mandatory 3d acceleration (which wouldn't be so bad if they would leave Unity 2D alone but nope, they're killing that off.....) and the full screen , space wasting interface. I am on a desktop, not a netbook. Optimize accordingly, please.

Unity is a fine interface for smaller screens and mobile devices. Not so much for the desktop.

Reading this: https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/telemetry-should-you-allow.html I've stumbled on this:

> Optional telemetry, of course, but again - this creates a selective and unpredictable reality. Ordinary people don't care either way, and nerds will always make deliberate choices that often have nothing to do with product or profit or anything else entirely.

So, by that logic, users who opt out of telemetry are aware of why they are doing it. People who don't care share their chaotic usage patterns. This creates a false picture of usage reality, and makes software worse. In conclusion, there are only two remaining choices:
1. Make telemetry non-optional
2. Ditch telemetry and rely on QA studies

That's really not a fair judgement. Like wazoox said, you used completely untypical hardware for a desktop system. And on top of that you did use neither a typical distribution nor a modern Desktop environment. For example, you wouldn't run into the multimedia software issues with something like Ubuntu with a KDE or Gnome desktop. And with something a bit less mainstream like Arch or void you'd have a great foundation for more alternative setups (like a custom desktop environment with software you selected for yourself).

Look for example at https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/kubuntu-focal.html.