I used to be a huge Microsoft fanboy. Back when a new version of Windows felt cool, I bought it. I loved Windows Home Server, Vista, Version 8 (after I figured out how to make it run for a desktop and not a tablet--the first hint that they didn't quite know what they were doing), XP was great, and 10 was the best.

They had a nice way of keeping track of the Windows installs I had done in the past, so I could resuse a license on a different machine, making installing on an old system fun and exciting for me.

But then the unthinkable: I flashed a new BIOS to my gaming computer (Ryzen9, 12 cores, 64GB RAM, a nice machine) and suddenly my Windows 11 Enterprise license was no good anymore. A security fix killed my license to use Windows 11? Yep.

You see, I had become the product that Microsoft sells. They need me to see ads, ads that are built into the Windows 11 Home and Pro additions, but not in Enterprise.

So last January I added a USB3.2 SSD drive (10Gbit/sec) and put Ubuntu 24.04 on it, and that's been my desktop since. I went into the old Windows 11 partition occasionally to do security updates, but that's it. 

And the first thing I noticed: Games were faster! Whether in Steam or in Bottles, games ran much better in linux than in Windows.

And as a home lab guy, I appreciate that I can install an OS and not worry about licenses at all.

I now run 8 linux computers, and two Windows. And I've been seriously considering blowing the big install away and switching my big server host (dual processor HP Z840) to Ubuntu as well (right now it's there to host Hyper-V and some samba storage, but the KMV virtualization host built into the Ubuntu Kernal can host the same files I use now for my virtuals. The only Windows machine I'll keep is a Windows 11 that hosts this blog. And that's only because I made an unwise choice years ago. I might spend a week and install WordPress as a docker then move all my posts over, and that would put me in a much better spot than using this blogging software.

So for me Windows is dead. I've seen in the last month some of the channels I watch on Odysee say the same thing: https://odysee.com/@Coldfusion:f/how-microsoft-slowly-killed-windows:9 and https://odysee.com/@RobBraxmanTech:6/tpm:5 and https://odysee.com/@RobBraxmanTech:6/windows-11-rant:9. 

The greatest offence is the TPM2.0 requirement for Windows 11: an enhanced "security" chip to keep you safe. What it really does is store identifiers so you can be tracked more efficiently. And Microsoft has access to them. And advertisers. They made an API for others to access data stored in the TPM.

To Windows I say, "Buh-bye."