Half of the time when I press the Windows key Windows does nothing at all, or pops up an empty box where the Start menu should be and leaves me wondering whether it will eventually fill the box with things. When I finally get to click an icon, half the time nothing happens, or maybe the menu disappears and then nothing happens. But programs are so slow to launch that you don’t know for sure nothing happened, so you have to wait half a minute before trying again. Then 2 instances of your app launch together. And then there’s the constant focus stealing in Windows, still unfixed after decades.

I really don’t get how people can prefer that interface to basically any of the Linux ones. They’re all faster and more functional than Windows. I do understand the issue with specialist photo, video or music software though. I still need to keep a Windows machine (physical or virtual) handy for the Affinity suite, Ableton Live, and legacy projects in Visual Studio. But my daily computing experience has been so much smoother, faster and more relaxing since I switched to Linux, and I think most ordinary users would actually have an easier time with something like Linux Mint than with Windows.