Damn…what is this, r/seattle?

Don’t forget the fact that despite it’s just a cheeseburger, it’s named “The Vonderbilt Wonder”, “Halfsie Pattsies”, or “Edmonton the Second”. Ideally on a menu so scant on details it’s hard to tell the french fries from the extra avocado.

Which goes swell, until you realize that you are instead dealing with an ever complex and gnawing realization you can barely quantify as existential dread in light of the remarkably complex yet dangerous capabilities found in every human present and yet to be conceived on this suddenly constricting mortal plane, exceeded only by the sheer number of permutations which you generously call ‘best case scenarios’ that result in an irrevocable destructive spiral on the fragile biome only loosely labeled by you as “third rock from the sun”.

How broken are we talking here? Like, installation is kinda borked but technically works broken, or purge it with fire and salt the storage medium broken?

I have often busted my machine learning rig as it runs an ancient (but spacious VRAM) GPU. If I upgrade the drivers by accident, it takes an average of 1-2 days to make everything happy again.

I used to be more cavalier with my boot partitions; I am no stranger to a busy box for repairs. Best moments are when I used to try and adjust a live partition to make more room for the swap partition (or vice versa).

I have screwed up more Raspberry PI installations than I care to count. Usually by my own hand.

I have completely broken Xwindows multiple times due to drivers, trying to go between desktop environments, and most frequently trying to get video cards to work that aren’t natively supported.

I don’t doubt you cleaned up it up well. But you are the exception rather than the rule for experiencing Windows 11.

The absolute shitfest that is the incessant integration with Bing and other online only tech is the biggest problem. If you have muscle memory like I do to start button + type keyword for a program + enter, it is unbearably slow to respond at times for the search to catch up. Or my new favorite, getting ready to hit enter, only to have it change the current selection right before.

And this is to say nothing of the critical settings you can no longer directly control or are just broken. Want to change the power profile of your laptop? Buried. Want to get an estimate on your battery time remaining? Better open the registry. Want to switch your background? Well, roll the dice on that high resolution PNG you just created; unlike 10, 11 fails on some backgrounds of certain filetypes if they’re over a certain size (try a detailed PNG over 3000x4000). Just want a plain old Documents directory that isn’t integrated with OneDrive? Happy hunting; turning it off ain’t enough anymore.

Windows 11 is trash. Microsoft kept boasting it was “faster” than 10, but it is (unsurprisingly?) heavy in some weird areas, including a less snappy start menu, more telemetry, invasive integration with their software, you name it. Tried one machine in my collection to try it via an upgrade (a Microsoft Surface Pro 6), and the performance was so bad I ended up going back to Windows 10. Multi-second lag just to get to the program shortcuts is a really bad sign.

Yeah, it was kinda the stuff of nightmares. I think it actually… fused … some things together.

Yes. So much yes.

Sure, at least half of the FAANG use Linux. But they use a homegrown Linux flavor often maintained by an entire dedicated team. Not some random ass Ubuntu or Mint ISO you downloaded; these images are custom tailored to the workflows, dev needs, security needs, and even package management needs of the corporation. They often carry a complete profile template that integrates with whatever they’ve chosen to enforce authentication, have a lavish on-board remote monitoring system, you name it.

Not safe enough. Give it another decade; I’m sure they’ll get around to ruining it by then.

This won’t hold true if your RAM gets to the limit, and you end up creeping into swap space. If you do, everything becomes a potentially streamed asset! While certainly not ideal, you’ll feel it harder on a HDD vs. SSD. Remember, you need at least 16GB of RAM for this monster, which these days is basically standard on most PCs (and about 70% of all Steam users as of August have no more than 16).

Maaannnn… I got another steering wheel. Anyone willing to trade for an ignition system? I’ll settle for two NPCs who will get out and push!

This is the real answer to this question. Not just an invention to unfairly evaluate folks (and charge them originally to see it!), but nothing more than a “how much we can fleece you for” score that has become so widely embraced you can’t ignore it.

Let’s not forget HP making an “update” that effectively self-destructed the printer for use if you don’t use their cartridges. Evem after the public outcry and back pedaling by the company with a new bios update, my printer still “manifested” the same problem they intentionally introduced.

Replaced parts, tried other things, then just said “forget it” and replaced it with a more expensive color laser from a competitor. Happiness and reliable printing ensued.

Yeah, and this only gets worse with bigger monitors. Want to use that 43" TV as Monitor #3? Wigglin’ isn’t going to help.

Real users give up and start using keyboard shortcuts to move crap around until they find it again.

Or just get a wireless gaming mouse with adjustable DPI, crank it up to 11 billion, and try to catch it doing near lightspeed as it goes through all four monitors at once. The only drawback is that, according to physics, it will likely have experienced time dilation, which means your mouse cursor has aged significantly in the short time it was in flight.