Why I am leaving Windows!

It seems everyone these days is updating their machines to Macs or Windows 10 and my work gives me a unique look into how the systems function for everyone in all environments.

As a gamer, technician and web developer, a reliable operating platform is something I have always expected to have and for many years its been Windows based. My experience with Mac's has only really taken off in the last 4 years so I feel I can now make statements regarding the operating system.

History

I have been using Windows operating systems since around 1993 when I was first introduced to Windows 3.1, not being that old, it was an experience rather than anything more and at the time there were three major players in the home computer market. The well oiled expensive Microsoft system, The Mac which from what I gather has always been expensive and Acorns. Yes, Acorns used to be a thing!

I didn't get my first computer until 1997 however when I started at secondary school and this happened to be the old Windows 3.1 system. Windows 95 was out and very attractive with its TV ads showing you can play cool games on it like Sim City and many other things. It was also expensive.

I managed to bork that thing many times and learnt about MSDOS and how it worked underpinning Windows 3.1 and later Windows 95 and 98. Looking back, I barely scratched the surface but I gave it a good go.

The year 2000 came around and with it, more operating systems to play with. At this time, I was still playing with DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 and not long after decided to invest in a laptop. It came with Windows 2000 and finally I could play games and be up to date with ethernet technology!

Windows XP was next and another 2 new systems, a laptop and a PC and this was definitely the start of my understanding how systems work... and also the start of change. It was now that I could appreciate good and bad operating systems after the terrible Windows ME. I now knew that Windows wasn't always right.

Vista came out and another new system in the house (not mine fortunately) and I could tell almost immediately it was bad. It was a memory hog and in the days when 2GB RAM was standard, this was bad.

I trialled Windows 7 and immediately could tell that Windows XP had been revived in a new format and it worked! Its until today when Windows 7 is finally being kicked out from everywhere that I finally knew I had to change too. My experience of Windows 8 was limited and as everyone knows, it was designed for touch screens. Sadly, it didn't really work and neither does Windows 10. In fact, for a touch screen OS, 8 is still the best Microsoft choice.

So we are up to the modern day now.

Windows 10

The operating system that will never need to be replaced, yes follow that link and see what I mean. This is the start of the downfall that Microsoft created.

As you can probably tell up to this point, Mac isn't exactly a viable alternative for me and I have invested plenty of time on their systems now to be sure about it starting with "Mountain Lion" and working the way up.

The good

• The start menu has the potential to be a killer, if it had been designed well from the start that is...
• The simplified notifications tab could be useful but most people I know prefer to add gadgets (like Windows 7 used to do) rather than be force subscribed to a new setup
• Taskbar on multiple screens!!! Hooray finally!
• The lock screen is customisable with ease, you finally don't need an app or a reg hack to make it look the way you want it to!
• The load time... Well I'll actually leave this in although technically its not much faster at all, its just the advances in other tech which has made this seem faster.

The bad

This list could take a while and I may have to update it as I think of more

• It updates itself EVEN IN SLEEP MODE. Yes you read that right. It'll switch your device back ON just to run an update... oh and guess what, that app you had open that's not Microsoft, well, if you didn't save it, its gone!
• Incompatibility with older games. I mean seriously, its almost identical to Windows 7 in the background but there are games I cannot play which worked fine on 7 64 bit. I would love a virtual container like 16 bit applications got for 32 bit except on 64 bit with 32 bit but no, you have to install an entire VM which, as you may know if you have ever tried, is not good with graphics, networking and well, generally anything.
• Additional features should be the same as Windows 7 but guess what, its not. In fact, if you don't have everything set correctly, some of the additional features can't be installed. I disable updates and many other excess services but you need those now because it downloads them all. Its not a big pain but it means you can't, for example download .NET 3.5 and install it. You HAVE TO USE the features installer
• Settings... whose hair brained idea was it to launch the new Windows Apps! I mean seriously, if your going to launch them, get rid of the old setup that does the same thing AND make it easier to use! Why leave the control panel in? I know why... it's STILL better.
• Windows 10 Apps... Well, enough said. They work OK but did you know UWP is being shifted already in a new direction away from being the main and primary built applications and that was the whole point of them? 

Why am I changing OS?

I have highlight my reason for leaving Windows in red and am shifting to Ubuntu. I have been testing out things like steam with Windows applications so that I don't feel guilty on my 100+ games list dropping to 40 ish and it works well. I also check that most of the applications or systems I use regularly are also available.

My main applications are:

• Opera (screw you Google, I know the core is still chromium but seriously your browser sucks at memory management and features)
• Steam
• PHPStorm
• and strangely OneNote
• Discord is browser based so thats not an issue (there is an app too)
• Putty (built in)
• WinSCP (built in)
• Handbrake

I mean really, its all there, just some legacy Windows applications *might* not run or have an Ubuntu alternative but I suspect there is no reason not to worry.

Why not MacOS?

Its the same reason as Windows really (except one major one) and that is that both operating systems have shifted to focus on END users meaning EVERYTHING is based on the users profiles and NOT on the system. This could be good for some but I would rather have one problem to deal with rather than an entire account needing attention and probably end up replacing it with a new profile.