To be entirely unbiased here, this covers user friendly distros that pretty much blow windows away for “default experience”.

Windows has adware and scareware - more so it has config-cluster-fuckification (I believe this is the academic term for it?). This is where windows lost me - when it started bundling basic config options together to force you to relinquish your privacy. Now it’s “edit the registry or gtfo”…

You don’t download shell scripts from github for windows. You download batch scripts and exes from random file hosting sites, and they don’t even fix your problem.

I think the biggest shift in the last 20 years is troubleshooting in Linux and windows.

20 years ago and I had to troubleshoot issues and Linux. It genuinely required a good bit of computer knowledge to get it done. Sometimes hours of work to figure out how to get a webcam to work Or how to fix grub?

Windows back then used to be so easy. And there was usually something that would do a quick fix.

However, now and I run across a windows issue. It’s a nightmare. I can put hours of work into trying to fix a driver issue or an issue with updates and get nowhere. Then go to reinstall the operating system and have to spend more hours just to get it installed.

Now in Linux, not only do I rarely have issues but also fixing those issues are pretty straightforward. And if I can’t fix it a reinstall takes minutes and I’m back up and running in no time.