In a way, I find it positive if Microsoft really has reached that kind of revelation. What that means in practice though, I don't know.

As I've said in the past, back in the Windows 9x and XP times, I felt Microsoft was actively trying make Windows better for its users, introducing new features that they thought their users would like, would make them enjoy using their Windows more, and bring even more users to using Windows (also from people who didn't really use computers yet, or might be thinking of using Apple Mac or OS/2 Warp instead, or whatever).

Windows 95 and especially Windows 98SE were great releases IMHO, offering people good backwards compatibility to their older MS-DOS and Windows 3.x programs, and introducing new things that would make the life of Windows users both easier and cheaper (like DirectX, Direct3D etc. which meant people were finally freed from having to buy their overpriced 3D graphics cards or sound cards from 3Dfx or Soundblaster brands, but instead they could more freely choose what to buy for their system, and it still worked).

Great stuff! I even recall back then arguing with some anti-PC Usenet warrior claiming that a standardized 3D API (like Direct3D or OpenGL) is pretty much impossible and a pipe-dream, that there will never be such API that you can buy different graphics cards and still get 3D accelerated graphics. PC games would ALWAYS have to directly support only certain 3D card brand(s)... He claimed OpenGL is only suitable for professional CAD workstations and such, and Direct3D just couldn't handle it either. Luckily he seemed to be quite wrong after all, now we can freely choose between several GPU makers (well, only three at this point, but that is not really related to the API or lack there-of).

Windows XP was a logical next step. Yeah people finally lost backwards gaming compatibility MS-DOS (boohoo! That is why I dual-booted Windows 98SE and XP on the same PC), but it made Windows more robust with NTFS, better memory handling (I presume?) etc.

After XP times though, I've increasingly felt MS is not thinking that much "how can we make Windows better for our users that they'd benefit more from it and make (Windows) PCs even more enjoyable for people to use?", but rather "how could we benefit from our Windows users more, and gently nudge them towards using our proprietary Windows RT/S/X devices, buy all their applications through our Windows Store, and adopt Azure cloud?".

Maybe the worst thing there is that MS seems to see the current x86 PCs as something that doesn't quite fit their view how people should do their Windows computing, but are still willing to tolerate it as long a we stubborn PC desktop users are still clinging to our old "legacy Win32" ways, and bring at least some money to MS.

Linux, for the most part, currently offers me better that feeling of the authors thinking "how could this feature benefit our users?" (rather than how it could benefit the authors of the feature).

At least now you know why Valve is still investing so much on Linux gaming and running your Steam games also on Linux (even the Windows games), despite the low number of users in official Steam surveys.

Maybe one day you will be glad they did... unless you don't care about the survival of your Steam game library, and desktop PC gaming overall, of course.

I'd say they tried to improve up until 7, even if Vista was a botched (rushed) release. Afaik MS lead windows developer left after that too.
WPF also is a great platform with .Net and MVVM - steep learning curve though. A lot of good things happened in that time, both for users and developers.

I guess by then MS management felt they had missed the mobile trend and tried to play catch-up - in vain, just like with the internet before... And that lead to the Metro abomination.
Nowadays the focus is clearly on SaaS, with Teams, Office 365 and all those integration. And the OS itself seems to be neglected...

That reminds me... what's with Teams anyway, I wonder why I am occasionally having problems coping with it?

When I get invitations to MS Teams sessions, first of all the links are damn long, whereas if someone makes an invitation for Google Meet instead, it is a nice clean short URL that I can easily copy&paste to a web browser and connect to the meeting.

Then, for reasons that I don't understand, occasionally my MS Teams application refuses to let me switch to another session, making it seems I have no necessary rights to join them... but sometimes it does.

I dunno, Teams just feels oddly complicated to use sometimes, compared to e.g. Google Meet. Not sure if they have a similar feature set though, e.g. I am constantly editing some Excel file through Teams for one of our customers, not sure how that would work through Google Meet...

...but if someone is suggesting an online meeting, I always hope they send a Google Meet link, instead of MS Teams. Sometimes I fight with problems not being able to join the Teams meeting or not hearing anything or others not hearing me (and having to reconnect from scratch), while Google Meet practically never gives me similar problems.

Oh well, Teams rant of the day...

No idea, we don't use Teams here. My company has their own Jitsi server - works like a charm, even with quite a few of participants. Some clients of ours use Cisco WebEx - that is... *urgh*. The school of the big one uses Big Blue Button, that works pretty well too it seems.

At some point they will just do it anyway. And those of us that don't like Linux but have no love for the modern Windows either, but are stuck using it will either just have to accept it and keep an older install/PC around, stick with the older version or never play older stuff again.

I still say though that they should not of released 10 when they did. It was no where near ready for major release. And even now several years on its still not.

It's all over the place, some settings open new graphics some older, we still have a mis-mash of the Settings App and Control Panel. Half the icons are the current Windows 10, half older Windows (and when the new update arrives it will add a third icon style.) And each new update seems to bring even more bugs, rather than fix things.

They should of just said we are working on a new version called Windows (just Windows no 10 or anything.) This version will have nothing legacy in it all. All new code, and it will not run older programs, it will only run UWP apps. It will be free to home users.

We will however continue to support Windows 7 which will only receive security updates, and bug fixes as and when needed. No new features will be added. This will remain legacy and will run older programs but will not run UWP.

I feel that would of been the best approach as people can keep Windows 7 and my beloved classic theme. And MS can focus on what their end goal is axing anything legacy.

There's a theory that Microsoft secretly supports Linux and keeps them alive to serve as their "competitor", because they know that Linux will never threaten Windows and if MS were to become a literal monopoly that the US government would come down hard on them (as they did in the 90's).

I think it was rushed out during the pandemic (or at least rushed from "small scale usage" to "everyone must be on Teams). My company moved from Skype for Business + Sharepoint to Teams last year.

Pros - the meeting functionality in Teams is better than the Skype one (especially when on VC - plus, you get computer generated subtitles if you want them) and generally, the file storage and sharing features are better than sharepoint, which was rubbish (but I still prefer a standard file server).

Cons - the inbuilt Excel, Powerpoint etc are garbage. You can't set it up to automatically call on real Excel - you have to click the menu and click open in desktop programme, which is a bit of a pain. It's also a much weaker IM tool than Skype for Business, especially as it tries to run the messages in the main window. Reading a pdf from a hard to find file place in Teams and accidentally click a message received notification? Prepare for annoyance as the screen focus changes to the chat instead.

it's amazing no one is competing with desktop os

They haven't come down hard on the google/apple monopoly. As for Linux it looks compromised by corporations digging into it.

I believe it's inevitable at this stage, just a matter of when.

The company I work for uses Google Workspace formerly GSUITE. It seems to be taking over as each contract and company we partner with seems to be on it also.

I used to love Windows 7 (and XP before that) and feel like Microsoft has pushed me away trying to force Windows 10 on me. Hated Linux when I first tried it but I've got used to it now. Would still take Win10 over anything Google though.

I remember when I joined GOG I was running XP with Zune theme, maybe I should take a look at it once more. Despite shortcomings, XP was good, and judging by its life cycle a success.
7 was smooth all-around, no wonder some still use it today. Nostalgia aside, it was a solid experience.
10 is at the other end of the spectrum though.
By the way, have you settled for any specific distro?

gOg WiLl taKE oVEr aNY daY nOw!!!

How evil or not evil Steam is has little relevance to the point that GOG is on an irrelevant amount of desktops and gaming PCs. Maybe if Steam tries to kill DRM-free or whatever that will change, but the situation today is what it is.

I still have a couple of old laptops with W7 installed. I've ended up on Debian with XFCE desktop and I really like it. The first one I tried was Ubuntu Unity (I think) years ago because I wanted to use some program that wasn't on Windows but I hated it. Then I tried Mint because everyone recommends it, not sure why I couldn't get into that one. Debian XFCE feels similar to W7 for me and once I got my head round the package manager I started to enjoy it.