The graveyard of being paid to use Windows 11, AKA “winning!”

Sunday, 12 July 2026  |  Nate Graham

I just finished reading Thom Holwerda’s hilarious article on OSnews about being paid to use Windows 11 for a month from the perspective of being a “switcher” moving away from Linux. It’s a great read; I encourage everyone to stop right now and go read it!

In a nutshell, it’s truly amazing how bad the modern Windows user experience is when you’re accustomed to anything else:

  • Missing drivers
  • Black screens
  • Broken sleep/wake
  • Ads and intrusive AI in apps
  • No visual consistency
  • An update experience that’s fragmented, slow, and frustrating

My extended family includes a lot of Mac users, and I can tell you it’s barely better there. They suffer from:

  • Limited hardware selection
  • Devices that deliberately skimp on storage space to push people towards paid cloud storage subscriptions from Apple
  • Ugly and low-contrast UIs
  • Terrible window management
  • Slow and unresponsive apps
  • Poor integration with 3rd-party services

We’re ready

I’ve been saying for years that Linux is ready for normal usage. We often lament our bugs and failures, but under-estimate just how bad the competition is.

The reason why Windows and MacOS are so prominent is not because they’re better, but rather because of their inertia and wide distribution on retail hardware. If people can’t buy Linux computers in Best Buy and Mediamarkt, we’ll never get there.

Inertia takes care of itself over time with success. But we can do something about distribution: we can continue to make our software pre-installation ready. I’ve been talking about this since my first Akademy talk in 2018, and KDE has made amazing progress in just 8 years.

It’s clearly working, too.

Successes

This is why I get so excited about Valve’s new Steam Machine console/PC running KDE Plasma. Five years ago, I got excited about the Steam Deck. And I’m excited about Tuxedo Computers and Kubuntu Focus for shipping KDE Plasma on all of their computers out of the box. For an up-to-date list, see https://kde.org/hardware.

I hope that in due time, I’ll be excited about Framework Computer and Slimbook shipping a Plasma-based OS out of the box, too. 😎 And someday after that, Razer. I think they’d be receptive. And then Lenovo, HP, Dell, and Asus. I don’t believe this is far-fetched.

When people buy one of these devices, are they going to experience some Linux-specific bugs and annoyances? Yes, it’s inevitable. Nothing is perfect. But what we offer is good. Better, even. Better for users and better for hardware vendors.

What’s left

Is there more to do? Yes. We need a stronger 3rd-party software ecosystem, including Linux versions of more popular pro apps. A bit more Wayland work to close the remaining gaps. Operating systems that are safe and full-featured out of the box. Better documentation. More companies capable of offering professional support. And so on.

But all of this is happening! Isn’t that amazing? I find it amazing. Here we all are, offering the world a better option as some of the world’s largest companies are in stage 2 or 3 of the enshittification process. And we can help. It’s so cool.