This is a common thing in online discourse, and reviews. People aren't usually going around posting "Yet another day of no issues with my computer". There's no emotional motivation there.
I'll take a swing. I've had no issues with my Windows 10 desktop since I built it in 2020. None of the bloat, ads, forced updates, OneDrive pushing. None of the shit people regularly cite as problems inherent and unavoidable with Windows.
I did my research and used the proper official tools to configure it before and immediately after a fresh install. Used third party scripts and programs for messing with configuration shit as minimally as possible.
I've only had to adjust things maybe three times a year, and most of the time it's been to re-enable shit that the average user would never disable like printing or hibernation, rather than having to fix or adjust anything from an update.
I appreciate your well-thought response. I’ll give you my 2¢ and I want to preface what I’m about to say with the idea that this not a hill I’m willing to die on, it’s just my personal experience.
On the contrary, I have accidentally ran into a number of people online saying “I’m so happy with the performance of my Linux box” but less so for Windows, but that’s likely due to the communities I’m a part of. I also made my original comment with specific, stubborn people I know in real life, who hate Windows and refuse to do anything about it.
The time you’ve seemingly spent configuring Windows sounds like the same amount of time an average Linux user would spend to setup theirs. I also use Windows, macOS, and Linux daily and have all kinds of weird issues on all 3 of them, but for Windows, since everything is closed source, there’s often nothing I can do about those issues other than wait for an update and hope those issues are fixed. The same goes for macOS but the number of issues I have with it are very minimal in comparison. But at the end of the day, if this setup makes you happy, then I’m happy to hear it.
I used to advocate for Linux, because I wanted more people to use it, so that more software devs would support it. I care a lot less about that since proton came to prominence. Linux still doesn't get all the support from devs that I want, but there's so much great software available now, both open source and proprietary, that I don't really worry about non Linux users anymore.
So use whatever OS you want, folks. I don't really care.
I've tried that far too many times with both W10 and W11. Microsoft always finds a way to re-bloat. I'm pretty sure they have a team dedicated to making sure you get a bunch of bullshit bloat, and to find work arounds to however you removed it.
Way less painful to start over with LTSC and then forget about keeping on top of bloat, AI, and telemetry.