Honestly, this bashing has been going on ever since Windows 95. MS does make blunders time to time, but ultimately, so far I mostly like Win10 - it's a clear improvement over 8.1. I'm sure you can hack 8.1 into something usable, but it doesn't start out that way, while Win10 only needs some decluttering and basic security hardening (unless you're up against a three-letter agency, I'd say built-in tools such as gpedit are fine for that, and if you ARE, use
Linux OpenBSD instead).
The moment 8.1 buried itself in my eyes was when I saw they have a "Control Panel" AND a "Settings", with settings randomly distributed between the two. How lazy and shite can you be as a UX engineer to do this? And sure, Windows has a history of hiding "advanced" settings in apps you mostly need to call up via command line (like the aforementioned gpedit), but not basic settings like this...
Also, the weird mouse gestures and the "start page", nope thanks.
(And the fact that it included clearly untested drivers for old Intel integrated network controllers, so that the thing went BSOD every 15 minutes on my somewhat dated Lenovo Thinkpad.)
Yes Linux is probably becoming more and more of a valid solution for workstations, but hardware support is still often an issue. The hardhat ideological approach of the Kernel team to hardware drivers really doesn't help a whole lot - sure it would be best if all hardware would be based on open interfaces, but it often isn't - and what we get is weird hacks to include proprietary code by circumventing GPL, and half-baked drivers.
As for Ubuntu desktop, while I like how Ubuntu Server feels, the few times I tried Desktop always turned me off of it - bugs, weird shit happening all over the place, plus the integrated
spyware cloud capability, fuck that shit, if I want that I'll install Windows.
So for now my main workhorse is a Mac, and I'm playing around with Windows on the side to "keep up"...
![Smiley :)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xsmiley.gif.pagespeed.ic.R8GFI-pF6f.png)
But with Win10, I no longer have too big problems with getting a PC as a core machine in the future - I like Mac OS better, but Apple has really dropped the soap on the hardware front. What's with that shit keyboard, it's up to par with the rubber chiclet on old Spectrums in terms of crappiness.