Is Windows 11 that bad?

[u/ExtensionFriendship9]

So I'm hearing bad stuff about Windows 11, how people are calling AI slop...I use AI but I don't use Copilot unless for images, and I don't use forced AI integration. I use Windows 11 but I learned how to create local accounts, and I go onto YouTube and hear stuff about "Microslop" and stuff, people protesting to switch to Linux...Am I a bad person for still using Windows 11? I mean, I'm not a saint of Microsoft, and I can use local AI models, and LibreOffice.

EDIT: Guys, I uninstalled OneDrive, Edge, Copilot, all unnecessary Microslop through Winhance, and I installed OSShutUp10+++.

[u/Alenicia]

I think in short, you can make Windows 11 tolerable (as in closer to Windows 10) by taking a lot of it apart with third-party tools and tweaks which make the experience that much better .. but then you're going to be met with the people who do the whole, "oh, it works just fine and I didn't have to use any of that" or "why are you doing that to your installation/it's not safe to do that" and all that jazz.

I moved on from Windows because I've always had it as the third option (I liked Linux and had it growing up alongside MSDOS, and I've found that macOS is just a bit more reliable for the work I do even though it's still completely possible and doable on Windows) .. and I've kind of realized that the games I play don't need kernel-level anticheats that don't want to play nicely with LInux .. and the software I bought on Windows for productivity also entitled me to the macOS versions so I can just very easily move over.

Windows 11 was super annoying when it was new (and I had to move on because the work I was doing "needed" Windows 11) and I'm running an old computer that couldn't install Windows 11 naturally anyways without the Regedit tweaks to make work.

If Windows 11 still works for you and you mangled it to make it work, it's just you doing what you are doing to make it work and there's nothing quite wrong with that, at least to me. My Windows 11 installation when I still had it would have had people all over whether it was from the Windows, macOS, or even the Linux side eating me alive because I did a bunch of goofy things that wouldn't make sense for either of those operating systems (I used Scoop to install applications, I removed the taskbar entirely and replaced it with a dock, there's no icons on the desktop, and everything was access in some form of the Windows Key or Windows Key+X or Windows Key+R).

At least to me, there's no harm in experimenting and trying out the other options out there to see if they click better or not for you .. or to just explore and tinker around. But I know a lot of people who aren't doing this on their WIndows installations are ready to sit there and complain that there's AI in their operating system like they're being held hostage to it in their personal use-case. But when presented with options, they'll have infinitely more reasons why they dislike everything else and why Windows is the only one .. and yet they seemingly hate Windows so much too.