Windows

Long-term owners

I think the last BSOD i had was 10 years ago and when a laptop didn't work anymore, it was usually because some of its hardware broke.

May 2026 · comment

What hackers pick instead

• macOSRecommended for consistent keyboard shortcuts, strong security, tight Apple ecosystem integration and getting work done without fiddling, though critics cite recent bugs, CPU spikes, clunky window management and UI regressions.1041recommend
• LinuxA free, open-source OS praised for total control, stability and wide hardware and software support, especially on servers; desktop use can still take extra effort and debugging.745recommend
• HaikuA free BeOS-inspired desktop OS praised for being extremely fast and responsive with a clean, consistent UI, though many say it's not yet practical as a daily driver.115recommend
• NetBSDRecommended for running on almost any hardware, including old machines, with a clean, well-documented design, though support for modern hardware and drivers is weak.100recommend
• ChromeOSGoogle's locked-down, auto-updating operating system that people praise for security, speed and ease of use. Common caveat: Google ends update support early, and apps are limited.91recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 8782 comments. Each links to the original.

1. windows 11 is the most secure windows ever created, the amount of random checks it has is astonishing. Unfortunately it gets undermined by poor driver code from third-parties

   Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11”

2. Windows is a better choice for most people and most organizations because the Windows ecosystem has lots of documentation, training, system integrators, and consultants.

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Ask HN: What Linux Would Be a Good Transition from Windows 11”

3. no Linux distribution ... comes close to Windows in terms of stability and cohesion when managing windows, even though Windows still has a lot of room for improvement.

   Mixed · May 2026 · in “The Best Windows is Linux”

4. Yeah this is why I stick with Windows. Unlike it seems a lot of people on HN I don't really see any issues with it that would want to make me move away

   Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins”

5. It is handicapped by explicit anti-consumer decisions shoving things users don't want into it, but the kernel is hands down better than Linux's kernel

   Mixed · May 2026 · in “Have a Coherent AI Policy”

6. Windows really does suck from a UX perspective, but if you are trying to make money doing things professionally with a computer, it's hard to beat.

   Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Microsoft's "Fix" for Windows 11: Flowers After the Beating”

7. Vista had an undeserved bad rep IMO, it was an important 1.0 milestone for many new technologies and improvements especially in the security model.

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back”

8. It had very strong functions for office work and stock trading, but the only drawback was that there were many advertisements and vulnerabilities.

   Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “What OS should I pick?”

9. Windows handles this much better than any other OS. The API passes versions (== structure sizes on the calling side), and WinAPI can handle that.

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Solo – a .so loader for static Linux binaries”

10. Windows 10 reversed a lot of the controversial UI changes from Windows 8, but the mouse/keyboard UX was still largely a regression from Windows 7

    Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display and Touch”

11. On the exact same box running Windows I was able to have VS Code, Chrome with 15+ tabs, terminals, docker, etc. all running with zero issues.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM”

12. everybody was constantly bitching about all the stuff that was clearly the beginning of enshittification that got turned to maximum on 11.

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “GOG's new owner can't stand Windows either: 'It's such poor-quality software '”

13. Be warned that they employ extreme amounts of dark patterns to try and trick you into converting the offline account into an online one.

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Microsoft kills official way to activate Windows 11/10 without internet”

14. The absolute only reason I installed windows on the home machine is because gaming is still essentially nonexistent in the Linux sphere.

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great”

15. Things are very occasionally annoying right now when a new update enables some new idiotic thing but 99.9% of the time things just work.

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too”

16. If it wasn’t for the forced cloud integration, forced AI and other user-hostile behaviour, Windows 11 would actually be quite a nice OS.

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Microsoft confirms Windows 11 is about to change”

17. With Windows 10 and 11 the enshittification started in a big way and it became a vehicle for analytics, pushing ads and Microsoft stuff

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Raycast for Windows”

18. I am giving props to Microsoft because it did wrangle an industry together to standardize where one company makes the operating system

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Nvidia's 10-year effort to make the Shield TV the most updated Android device”

19. I think the last BSOD i had was 10 years ago and when a laptop didn't work anymore, it was usually because some of its hardware broke.

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows”

20. Windows 10 was reasonable in terms of how it worked, it was also butt-ugly, but now you couldn't do much of anything to customize it.

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000”

21. Windows (and iOS) did make genuine improvements to OSs but because of decisions like these most users are locked out of enjoying them

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “The Windows 95 User Interface: A Case Study in Usability Engineering”

22. Whether you prefer Windows 2000 or XP or 7 or one of the server versions over 10/11, all of those were in many ways 'better' than 11.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March”

23. However many ads MS will shove in windows, as long as they can run software that they depend on, companies and factories won't care.

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account”

24. Windows 10 was definitely a step back from 7, but wasn't ... terrible?

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “GOG's new owner can't stand Windows either: 'It's such poor-quality software '”

25. Windows 7 was definitely lauded as decent contemporaneously.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “GOG's new owner can't stand Windows either: 'It's such poor-quality software '”

26. now we have 3 different versions of the audio control panel in Windows, the start button is somehow in the middle of the screen, and windows search no longer searches your PC

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Our Commitment to Windows Quality”

27. Windows update broke hibernate few weeks back. When laptop gets out of hibernate - Wifi works for a few minutes and then once in a while the Wifi Adapter isn't detected.

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “MAI-Cyber 1”

28. it happened due to what is for all intents and purposes bitrot: It breaks during regular use due to small compounding errors that happen due to bad software design

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Microsoft patches Windows and Excel – breaks audio, remote access, and paste”

29. I have a perfectly useable machine but since I'm unable to login due to vague Microsoft nonsense and there doesn't seem to be a way to fix it I need to reinstall.

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March”

30. Month after month I read this stuff (along with the seemingly neverending gaming issues with MPO?) and think, yep, I will stay off Win 11 as long as I can

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Windows 11's Patch Tuesday nightmare gets worse”

31. Microsoft is a company that has very little right to complain about support costs. They'd save themselves a fortune if they stopped releasing bad software

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Don't Make Me Talk to Your Chatbot”

32. Why accept mediocrity when Microsoft has shown to be capable of producing something better than their current iteration of Windows?

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March”

33. Windows 11 still ships with the installer from Vista.

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back”

34. There is no differentiation between configuration that should be active on (user, machine) tuple, and configuration that should be active on (user, *) tuple. (even Windows gets this right!)

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Microsoft patches Windows and Excel – breaks audio, remote access, and paste”

35. On Windows 11, when you reconnect to a monitor or set of monitors that you've connected to before, it will automatically return your open windows to the layout

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March”

36. the endless-printer-list-oh-god-its-not-even-alphabetical situation is more of an admin oversight to a clunky and low priority situation than anything

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “Microsoft Needs Windows Lite”

37. The fact that Windows can so thoroughly abstract the computer away from the user is in itself a massive feat that few other OSs have really managed.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent”

38. Microsoft even addressed the criticism that Windows was largely not possible to use from keyboard, and massively improved it starting with Win10.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven”

39. My last install of Windows 11 was shockingly frustrating but with a little patience and discipline it's customized to Windows 7 levels of sanity

    Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back”

40. Interestingly enough Windows 7 boots faster (in a VM) than both Windows 10 and Windows XP. It feels faster than Windows 10 while running too.

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Microsoft says Windows 11 is now 'more responsive' and runs better on 8GB of RAM”