I fancy myself an “idea man.” A thinker. And when I was installing Windows 11 on my latest PC, I was struck by a bolt of inspiration. “Wow,” I said to myself, “it sure would be nice if they made a version of this operating system that does not have five hundred things I would like to remove by force every single fucking time I install it.” So I would like to offer this idea free of charge to whoever took over for Bill Gates after he left to not improve education, pretend like he was giving away all of his money, and do morally dubious charity work in the global south: why not make a version of Windows that doesn’t have any of this shit in it?
Now, I can see you nerds out there typing “Chris, you could simply install Linux,” and you would be correct. But let’s just table that for a second, this is between me and “M$” as we used to call Microsoft back in my day. How about you create a version of Windows that’s just for me, without any of those new features you’re introducing to confuse older people with poor computer literacy? Bing news results and ads every time I try to look for an app? Don’t need it. An AI Copilot that isn’t particularly helpful and that I find morally repugnant? Pass! OneDrive installed by default? No thanks, I am an adult. And this new hardware-enabled feature that takes a snapshot of everything I do and say at all times? Oh wow, that’s really bad, man, why would you think I would want that on my computer? None for me!
Let me level with you. Every single time I install your OS on my computer, I have to pull all of this crap out of it anyway, either by slowly and painfully uninstalling or disabling it in the registry, or with a script that hasn’t been updated in several years and will probably break some key functionality in my computer. But I haven’t given up on you guys yet! You had a pretty solid run there before you got into this AI stuff. There are still many reasons for me to use your OS, like .NET Framework, Powertoys, winget, five very specific apps that don’t have a Linux version, and my fourth favorite web browser, Edge (“It used to be pretty good!”)
Look, I pay a questionable-looking but otherwise reliable key reseller 17 to 26 dollars every five years to buy me a legal OEM copy of your operating system from India, so the least you could do is listen to me on this one. Apple has its problems, and macOS is not perfect, but at least they know how to make an operating system that doesn’t feel like Tim Cook is personally inventing new malware to send to me every single day.
And it’s not like you don't have people who know better; you own GitHub, for god’s sake. Just go down and ask one of those open source nerds “hey, would you voluntarily use this operating system without changing it?” and if they say “no,” go back to the drawing board until they say “sure” or “please stop bothering me.” And then sell me that version!
At the end of the day, we both know there’s nothing keeping me on your platform aside from inertia, boredom and Windows Subsystem for Linux. I basically do everything on the command line anyway, and it’s never been easier to run games on Linux and Mac. But I believe in you! Just sell me something like a slightly corny version of Ubuntu or the version of Windows you make for the really messed up parts of the government. Because if you continue on this course, I will be forced to completely switch over to Linux, and neither of us want that. Do you have any idea how annoying that would make me? I would get really into distros. I would lovingly extol the benefits of Pop!_OS to strangers. I would get really into Nix. That’s a demon you need to keep caged.
Anyway, think it over! You can call it Windows 11 Chris, named after me. And if you need any more advice, and are willing to pay a 6+ figure salary for a consultant on this project, I’d love to take the position. I will work 2 days a week, and the majority of my output will be me sending you this blog over and over until my position is made redundant or you put out at least one SKU of your OS that isn’t embarrassing to use out of the box.
