Farewell, Windows.

It was only a matter of time.

It may not be the year of Linux, but 2026 is now my year of Linux.

AI PC: The nail in the coffin

After last year when Microsoft announced they'd make Windows an 'AI PC', just after the Windows 10 end of life... it came clear to me that Windows as a system was just going to get further enshittified. The system was just going to become a bloated interface for the generative model garbage that's already infested absolutely everything... and to me that is not conducive to just having a system that just allows you to do what you want when it's trying to force you to use it a certain way.

This at the same time Microsoft have 30% of their "development" done by AI, causing numerous bugs recently like breaking networking, breaking being able to recover your PC and breaking the task manager (ironically duplicating itself).

A meme that summed it up pretty well, I think.

Now I want to state, I don't hate AI. I am just very jaded on how forced it is. If your software shoehorns some sort of generative AI on me, I will refuse to use it out of spite. Instead of actually having the technology be naturally adopted by users, they instead are opting to force users into interacting with it.

That doesn't seem like a technology that's actually useful, does it? copilot sure as shit isn't. Microsoft trying to infect Windows with it wont change that.

Copilot just isn't popular - even among the LLM using crowd, and Microsoft refuses to read the room and has zero respect for its users.

I'm not going to continue being part of this abusive relationship. There's no reason for me anymore to do so.

Changing operating systems can be tough

When making the decision to move to Linux, the thing that always comes to people's mind tends to be

Honestly, that's fair. That program for me was Roblox. I had previously used Linux in 2018 and 2019, for University and mobile development work... however I ended up having to go back to Windows eventually when I wanted to do Roblox development again.

Thankfully, since 2023 that hasn't been a requirement for me anymore. I just had no reason to really need to think about moving to Linux... of course until now.

Be the change you want to see

The more people who adopt Linux the more pressure there is for these companies to finally support it. Roblox included.

Linux is growing slowly, but surely. Valve have done a bloody good job at adding support for playing native windows games on Linux, even with some games having a better framerate than Windows itself. I have owned a Steamdeck for a few years, and it's part of what's convinced me that staying on windows for gaming is not a valid excuse anymore. I love the thing a lot.

Continuing to stay in Microsoft's ecosystem, just allows Microsoft to dictate how you should use your system. It's clear that they just want you to interact with copilot every step of the way, even if that means shoving it into every facet of the system. It's no longer your computer in their eyes. It's a platform for their products. That should be also obvious with trying to force you to use OneDrive and continually trying everything to force you into having a Microsoft account now.

It's a vehicle for you to use their products and services. The latest "product" being copilot, of course.

So the choice really is, continue to be in Microsoft's ecosystem of abuse or pick a system that you have full control over. The latter to me, is a much better deal. Even if it means giving up a few things.

Dipping my toes back in

I started off midway through last year by overwriting Windows with Bazzite on my laptop, It runs with a Fedora base, which given it's an ASUS ROG laptop, the community drivers are written for Fedora. I'd recommend Bazzite DX if you're a dev looking at Bazzite, which was something I found they supported after installing it. Switching it to the developer build was like using a Git repo, which was oddly satisfying as a developer.

rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-dx:stable

It was a good way to determine if I could run things I needed for work on Linux without issues. Turns out, since I don't require Roblox anymore... the answer was yes.

I of course, until recently held off actually moving to Linux fully with the excuse

But, why wait for Microsoft. Really? it's like a cartoon character who sees an anvil frozen in mid air - about to fall on them - and just standing there.

Dual booting: The Safest way to experiment

Since I required my desktop for doing my work, I decided to dual boot with Linux. I wanted something more appropriate for my main driver on my desktop, while also ensuring I had a fallback in case things went wrong.

Ultimately my choice in distro was to go with CachyOS. It's a distro based on Arch built for performance. I am a professional Game Developer, I want a system that works while also is performant.

The experiment

I decided to commit to using Linux as my main system. Not touching Windows, unless really necessary.

The good

• The only software I needed to find an alternative for, was Fork. SourceGit while less pretty, works as a good Linux alternative.
• I was able to get Unity and the Airship workflow working well. I even did the first Airship game deployment straight from Linux. +Rep!
• As expected from the Steamdeck experience, games I play work excellently.
• I have not run into issues with RAM usage, unlike Windows where it takes up a big chunk for absolutely nothing.
• Outside of installing or updating things, I've barely looked at the terminal.

The issues

• Unity Hub: I had some issues with the Linux support on that being a little iffy, however I've been able to resolve those. (To be fair, I'm not using Ubuntu which is what Unity "officially supports")
• There was issues with my windows drives using NTFS (the Windows file system) - but honestly didn't surprise me. Just required installing ntfs-3g. This only really matters if you have other disks/partitions that happen to have been created on Windows. One command fix.
  People go on about this as one of those things off-putting about Linux, but honestly I've had to install drivers on Windows plenty of times... the only difference is it's a command instead of some arbitrary installer.

The conclusion

The transition was for the most part quite smooth, definitely moreso than it was years ago when I last was using Linux. It's come a long way.

Of course, my experience may be different from yours. I am not posting this to convince you that you should move to Linux. Though, you should at least try it. Even if it's just dual booting in case you need specific software every now and then.

I'm just happy it's my system again and that I have full say on what gets put on it now. It's my computer, and that to me matters.