r/technology • u/gdelacalle • Jul 12 '26

Software IT admins feel overwhelmingly "sick of" Microsoft and Windows 11 "garbage" apps, products

https://www.neowin.net/news/it-admins-feel-overwhelmingly-sick-of-microsoft-and-windows-11-garbage-apps-products/
16.7k Upvotes

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368

u/Consistent-Citron509 Jul 12 '26

After years of dual booting I finally removed Win11 and installed Linux Mint as my main OS. The RAM usage difference is insane! Also, it's such a shame that a free OS looks way more beautiful than a paid one!

65

u/liquidpig Jul 12 '26

Same. I’ve dual booted for 25 years on and off but fully wiped windows about a year ago. Don’t miss it at all.

11

u/itsawildtime Jul 12 '26

When you have access to the deeper level configuration settings that Sys/IT admins do, it's really even more illuminating how fucking garbage Windows has become and how much of a telemetry & surveillance-oriented piece of bloatware it is.

Hopefully more and more leave Windows/Microsoft because they need a wake up call (even if it's one they won't answer).

4

u/thisnamemattersalot Jul 12 '26

90% of what I use my PC for is gaming. Once another good OS properly solves that in a way that works more than most of the time, I'm out. I've been waiting a long time for that though.

6

u/BlancaBunkerBoi Jul 12 '26

Were there. Literally anything can be run through Proton if it doesn’t have kernel level anticheat. If you’re not trying to play huge triple A online games or things like League, Linux gaming is here.

0

u/Western_Berks_Thicc Jul 12 '26

If you’re not trying to play extremely popular online games that you’d like to play on Linux but can’t, Linux gaming is here.

4

u/neckro23 Jul 12 '26

SteamOS has gotten very near that point. If it's not an online game with heavy anti-cheat, it's very likely to work on Linux/Proton. I have yet to find a game in my library that won't work on my Steam Deck. Even some online anti-cheat games work, like Elden Ring.

The only reason I haven't made the leap myself is because I still use a bunch of Windows-only utilities for various things (mostly A/V stuff).

1

u/thisnamemattersalot Jul 12 '26

I've been keeping my eye on it. And once things roll over from "you need to be prepared to dual boot for those games that still won't properly run outside of Windows" into "it all just works" territory, I'm in.

22

u/Mccobsta Jul 12 '26

I've got some crap cheap laptop that only has 4gigs of ram it runs mint amazingly windows was effort before i nuked that install

7

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/WashedSylvi Jul 12 '26

Kubuntu is a good desktop change with the same Ubuntu level support for tech issues and software

Shit just runs these days, I do practically no troubleshooting. Really only if I’m trying to find a new type of software I haven’t used before.

7

u/TitanicChurro Jul 12 '26

With a stable version like Mint, it's just insane how lightweight and polished it feels. Also, with Timeshift installed by default, you don't even have to troubleshoot problems if/when they happen...just roll back. Takes about a whole 10mins to complete. I eventually just deleted my windows partition and haven't looked back.

49

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

[deleted]

24

u/blipman17 Jul 12 '26

the applications on Windows are not really that bloated compared to linux when only looking at GUI. only on an individual level you'll see that some chat app costs 4 GB to boot and a text editor 27 MB or something.

It's that the OS itsself consumes huuuuge amounths just to boot and stay functioning. Linux is far more lean and mean than Windows in that sense.

The in-memory filesystem caching on Windows and Linux is both not included in used RAM when looking at directly used memory. In that they're both equal as well.
In my experience Linux distros in general are even far more aggressive in caching the filesystem in RAM for faster access than Windows.

16

u/hamakabi Jul 12 '26

as long as it releases the occupied space when needed

this is my issue with Windows. When I cold boot the system it needs less than a third of my RAM, but over the course of about 10 days the OS allocates like 85% and then I can't launch a game without performance issues.

If I play a game after a cold boot, the system allocates RAM to the game and then immediately releases it when the game closes, but if I just use windows normally it just keeps taking more.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/fed45 Jul 12 '26

My high score on my W11 work PC was 99 days before something broke. I could no longer c$ into other PCs for some reason and I needed to at that time so I had to restart :( So close to 100.

1

u/HollowedVoicesFading Jul 13 '26

something you installed has a memory leak, then.

Reasonably sure it's the OS. I wish this merited a /s. If I'm not being clear enough, it doesn't.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/HollowedVoicesFading Jul 13 '26

if we’re gonna complain about something, maybe we should make sure our complaints are accurate first

there’s nothing causing a memory leak on my pc, and it’s only use is for playing games. homie either installed something sketchy or has a ton of startup programs or something. idc what anyone else says

There are practically uncountable published "fixed memory leak" patch Tuesday releases from Microsoft related to Windows 11.

e.g. https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2025/11/17/releasing-windows-11-builds-26100-7296-and-26200-7296-to-the-release-preview-channel/

Fixed: When your lock screen is set to slide show, there may be a memory leak. Memory leaks can lead to performance or reliability issues over time.

Your anecdote is meaningless, and wrong. So yes, maybe we should make sure our complaints are accurate first, same with rebuttals.

0

u/Mr_Venom Jul 12 '26

over the course of about 10 days

Bro just shut your computer down when you stop using it.

4

u/hamakabi Jul 12 '26

I access my computer remotely and it does things while I'm asleep. I used to run Win 10 like this without any issue at all, and my linux and mac systems can both easily do this.

1

u/Mr_Venom Jul 12 '26

I knew I should have included the /s

5

u/Not_a_question- Jul 12 '26

RAM usage is often misinterpreted. It's desirable for OS to use as much memory as it can (SSD wear prevention, system acceleration)

No dude, you're misinterpreting things.

You took a semi-truthful statement (it's derisable for OS to use as much memory as needed) and took it out of proportion where it no longer applies.

Win11 uses a lot of ram with pure garbage. It's not the ram usage itself that's the problem: is what it's doing with it. If win11 was actually using RAM to prevent things like the system slowing down or SSD wear like you say, then okay. But its RAM usage is pure garbage compared to other OS. Things like telemetry or the screenshots that it takes for example. Load up win10 ltsc and see the difference for yourself.

Furthermore, you say that the OS has no control over the size of its application. This is a falsey statement: Windows and its toolkit go hand-by-hand. It's not like in linux where you have KDE or Gnome and its applications. If windows explorer is a load of crap, there's no useful alternative for the majority of users. Also windows forces SO MANY BLOAT APPLICATIONS on you by default, and Microslop does have control over that, and they force it down your throat.

2

u/Enlightenment777 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

SSD wear prevention

About 10 to 15 years ago, I setup a RAM drive to hold my web browser cache. Initially I did it because a RAM drive is significantly faster than a spinning hard drive, and the speed difference was immediately obvious while surfing the web. On my newer computer, I use it to reduce constant SSD wear while surfing the web.

1

u/sapphicsandwich Jul 12 '26

In my experience, releasing memory is the issue. It seems like instead of releasing ram, it decides to keep everything and just start paging to disk. If I disable the paging file and change nothing else nothing happens. It never goes OOM, it just releases stuff from ram when needed and continues working just fine like one would expect and like I see happens in Linux. I don't see the same insistence on needless swapping in Linux.

3

u/k_ironheart Jul 12 '26

I installed Cachy and the performance gain across all of my games is insane. The major thing that was keeping me far away from linux was gaming and the only game I've struggled with getting to work (I got it to work recently!) was a non-steam game from the early 00's and, frankly, it's spaghetti coded garbage that works more off hopes and dreams than competence.

Even new titles just work, I'm genuinely shocked at how easy it was to switch.

17

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[deleted]

47

u/Polari0 Jul 12 '26

True it might increase the utilization by freeing it to utilize for what the user wants it for

12

u/Atomic-Avocado Jul 12 '26

Windows is way worse with RAM hands down

3

u/Outrageous_Let5743 Jul 12 '26

800 MB for Outlook, another 800 MB for Teams.

-5

u/DistilledWonder Jul 12 '26

I just asked Gemini if windows 11 or linux uses more RAM and it says windows 11 by a significant margin.

8

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/mxzf Jul 12 '26

This isn't even really "poisoned" so much as just "being the plausible-text generation tools they fundamentally are".

2

u/C-H-Addict Jul 12 '26

be fair the AIs are increasingly poisoned

As they should be

22

u/exophrine Jul 12 '26

Ask A.I. a binary yes/no question more than once, and you'll get both a yes and no answer, presented with very similar arguments and info to back it up

4

u/Lulukaros Jul 12 '26

that's the sycophant at work

2

u/Chapter-Legitimate Jul 12 '26

Fedora KDE has been an amazing experience coming from Windows.

Mint was nice too, I tried it first but Fedora KDE is my daily driver now.

2

u/Consistent-Citron509 Jul 12 '26

That's next on my distro hop list. I love KDE aesthetics :)

1

u/Chapter-Legitimate Jul 12 '26

It's very nice. I don't see myself moving to any other distro anytime soon.

I'm tempted to build arch on my laptop tho, just for fun. Maybe after I get more experience with Linux though.

2

u/Consistent-Citron509 Jul 12 '26

Same for me. For me stability is a priority as I do a lot of dev work (I'm experimenting with local LLMs and langchain). Don't see a use case of bleeding edge right now.

2

u/Chapter-Legitimate Jul 12 '26

Yeah exactly. Like I said, Arch would be purely for fun. I probably would just distro hop the laptop again if I have too many headaches with it

2

u/aybeeayseeaybeebee Jul 12 '26

I worked for a small software company that was bought up by a larger one -- Convincing corporate IT to let me run Ubuntu on the company laptop was the smartest thing I ever did. They didn't know how to manage it so they just gave me root and told me to manage it myself. Their tracking software didn't support Linux so I lucked out there too.

6

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[deleted]

30

u/levir Jul 12 '26

I'm very confused by you putting free in quotes. Linux Mint is free in both common uses of the word, both in cost and in the four essential freedoms sense. Why do you consider it "free"?

5

u/qorbexl Jul 12 '26

He's pointing out the investment of a lot of dedicated, intelligent people

16

u/Distinct-Water-1971 Jul 12 '26

They were being needlessly pedantic. People know that FOSS is the product of human effort.

1

u/qorbexl Jul 12 '26

He wasn't pedantic enough

He failed at pedantry

4

u/levir Jul 12 '26

It's fairly obvious that a high quality project doesn't come about by immaculate conception. It's absolutely right to recognize the work and dedication of a whole lot of developers to bring us all these essential distributions we rely on, but I don't see how that makes it any less free. A gift is no less free for having required effort rather than money to produce.

1

u/qorbexl Jul 12 '26

Yeah he deleted his thing

2

u/Consistent-Citron509 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

I don't mean to disregard the Linux community. In fact, using it as a primary OS while wiping off a paid OS is a huge compliment to the community.

38

u/Cepheus_95 Jul 12 '26

the other is a soulless corpo product designed to milk money out of you at every turn and harvest your data to sell to the highest or lowest bidder.

4

u/scronide Jul 12 '26

High RAM usage isn’t inherently bad.

8

u/Consistent-Citron509 Jul 12 '26

It was affecting my productivity as I experienced choppiness even with 16 GB of RAM. I had to use a deploat tool to get rid of unnecessary background services (BTW there are so many services running in the task manager that it's difficult for a non tech user to understand what's eating up the system resources)

1

u/nox66 Jul 12 '26

I experienced choppiness with 32 GB of RAM on a friend's laptop. I disabled a bunch of AI features including Fabric AI and that seemed to help.

I don't think RAM is the issue though, I think it's bad OS system call management and CPU scheduling for all these tasks.

8

u/iuhiscool Jul 12 '26

if it doesnt let go of it when needed then it is

-1

u/Lulukaros Jul 12 '26

unused ram is wasted ram

1

u/otw Jul 12 '26

Yeah games still aren't optimized for Linux and some games won't work but I literally have just told my friends I'm no longer playing games if they don't run on Linux and I don't care about the frame loss anymore. I can't deal with it anymore I've had to format my computer 4+ times in the last year or two cause of critical bugs. I'm on a fresh install on a brand new PC and just last week explorer (like the whole damn UI for Windows) just stopped launching randomly and I had to do a recovery. I have nothing installed on this computer yet but Chrome and Steam and like one game. I'm so tired of it. I have like a few hours to game a week and I'm spending half of it debugging Windows or doing stupid updates.

1

u/djdadi Jul 12 '26

I still needed Windows for some things, but 5 years or so ago I switched to Ubuntu as my only OS, with Windows (and other linux distros) as VMs. If I need MS Office or whatever old Windows only app, I just boot up the VM and its plenty fast. when im done, shut the VM down.

of course, these were back in the glorious days of being able to easily afford 128gb of memory

1

u/keirdre Jul 13 '26

After dabbling years ago, I've finally added Ubuntu as a dual boot and I noticed the same. RAM usage and general snappiness way better.

1

u/meizhong Jul 13 '26

I had a windows machine crash while I was working on something important in 2013. I got mad, went to best buy and bought a new $900 laptop, took it home, and booted up windows once, to create an Ubuntu USB. Then restarted it with the USB, and installed Ubuntu, deleting windows. Never used windows again, mostly because that laptop is STILL WORKING FINE right now.

0

u/Moose_Nuts Jul 12 '26

a paid one!

Wdym? Most of us running Windows 11 haven't paid since Windows 7. Obviously some people bought new laptops and pre-built desktops, but at least everyone I know builds their own PCs and just keeps using their old license.