I have a lot of respect for Linux and use it here and there, but I am by no means an expert on it. The best thing I’ve done with it so far is running a Pi Hole at home.
Unfortunately, my job involves using MS Windows. A lot. After I retire…soonish…I hope to take some time and learn Linux better.
For my day-to-day Windows misery, I find that ShutUp10 does a great job of toggling off the bullshit you don’t want running. And it’s easy to toggle things back on if you ever need to. It’s a free program you can download and run. I send them a little money every year out of gratitude, but donations are completely optional.
Some FUD mongers will tell you that ShutUp10 ‘breaks’ Windows. That’s simply not true. It puts all the Windows settings you can change yourself in one easy-to-find place. Things that are normally scattered all over the UX and the registry.
While you could mess some things up using it if you’re not careful, it’s very good about color coding and letting you know which toggles are best to turn off, which ones are a little questionable, and which ones you should leave turned on (unless you know what you’re doing and can take the risk). I have used it for years now, on multiple PCs, with zero problems. It doesn’t make Windows 10/11 GOOD but it makes them less horrible.
XP still had the designed-by-engineers vibe. Since then, Microsoft got completely taken over by dipshits with marketing MBAs.
They now code Windows to impress executives and shareholders with how much they can harvest data and manipulate customers into using their stupid Store and so on. They stopped caring about the experiences of power users, or even casual users.
They don’t want the OS to work for us. They want us to work for them.
Omnibus. Hosted by Ken Jennings and John Roderick. They are both funny, enjoy each other’s company, and extremely knowledgeable. The show covers a swath of esoteric topics.
They want to wall some of their content off so it’s not easily harvestable on the web by competitors. But most of all, they want to have full control of your user “experience” so you can’t use browser extensions (like ad blockers). It’s all about money and control.