Windows needs to stop showing tabloid news

I use 10 now, as locked down and 'fixed' as I was able to make it (custom ISO via NTLite with a bunch of crap removed and some fixes steamrolled in), but really I look forward to ditching it altogether - which is a shame. For all the MS hate in the OSS community, I always thought Windows did a lot of stuff well (when it was good at least).

The telemetry, changing things for the sake of changing things and forced crap constantly being added is enough. I'm so in love with awesomewm at this point, and the fact that I can customize and program every part of my UI, allowing me to have something absolutely perfect and tailor made.

Yes, it is. The job of a proprietary OS is whatever that company says it is. If it's shoveling annoying ads to users, that's its job, and having annoying ads is a very sensible thing in a proprietary OS since the company is driven by profit, and they can make more profit by including lots of annoying ads. If you don't like the product your vendor has sold you, then you should choose a different vendor. A Free OS that doesn't come from a company with a profit motive won't have this same problem.

There is not, and has never been an alternative to windows for all use cases. Most notably: a gaming rig (One of few remaining use cases for stationary home PCs these days, so perhaps the most relevant for the idea of the Microsoft monopoly on the desktop). If you want to reply that Linux is a perfectly usable OS for a gaming rig these days then please reconsider. It's just not.

I actually don't understand how Microsoft reasons around these things. There is zero way that these news links actually "pay for themselves" in income vs customer alienation. There must be something else to it.

no, linux is not "perfectly usable" for every single task imaginable, but you know what? neither is windows, or osx, or ios, or android.

People are used to all the bullshit windows forces them to do, and since they consider that the default, thats just how life is for them, and nothing they can do can change that. Ask them to use linux? they will have all sorts of things they need before "its ready", but all the shit they put up with on windows does not get to go in same category, because they already accepted that thats just life.