In our search for the unusual or interesting among the world of operating systems, it might seem unexpected that today’s choice for a Daily Driver is the latest version of Microsoft Windows. Aside from Hackaday perhaps having a larger than average percentage of viewers using Linux based operating systems and generally catering to open source enthusiasts, there’s hardly anything special about Windows, is there?

Oddly for me there is — because while it’s a common enough OS for the masses, the last time I had a Windows computer it ran XP. That venerable OS is a world away from today’s Windows 11, and thus as someone who’s exclusively sat in front of a GNOME desktop for much of the last two decades, it’s an entirely new operating system.

There’s no doubt that it will make a Daily Driver, because of course I’ll be able to do my work on it. Where the interest lies is in seeing what Windows has become. Is it still a useful general purpose operating system, or has it become the locked-down walled garden of crapware that its detractors warn you about? Time to dive in.

A Secret Windows Machine

I have had a Windows partition on this machine since I bought it back in 2024. It’s an ex-corporate laptop from a reseller, and those machines always come with a too-small flash drive and a Windows install. So when I bought a new much larger drive for my Linux install I dropped the Windows partition on it too. After all, you never know when you might need Windows for something, right? Two years later and I’ve never touched it, so my first task in my Windows 11 is to run a system update. I timed the start to 16:30, and left it running. I have a gigabit fibre connection so it should be quick, shouldn’t it. At 19:16 I was finally able to use the computer, but even then Microsoft wasn’t quite finished. There were a slew of permissions choices where I had to opt out of their various data slurps, and their offers and mail.

Coming back to the Windows desktop when your last experience was XP with the Windows 95 theme is a bit of a shock. You instinctively head for the Start menu in the bottom left corner and instead find a widget box full of news feeds and stock tickers you don’t want. Closer inspection shows they’ve chased a macOS style interface with a Windows logo on the bottom bar as the Start menu roughly where Mac users find their folder full of apps.

I’m trying to approach this think as a Windows user would, so instead of heading off and downloading open source installers as you might expect, I’m off to the Microsoft Store. Although Redmond has its hand on my shoulder I was able to find GIMP without issue, so the basic requirements for my normal daily use is sorted without any drama at all. It’s the ancient version 2.1 though, so it was off to gimp.org for the latest version. Installation was the same as any Windows install back in the day, there’s no locking down here.

Crapware’s a Bit Different

So I’ve got a Daily Driver, what are my impressions. After so long away and having missed the debacle of Windows 8’s Metro interface, I think the desktop interface is actually pretty good. It’s kept up with the times in a way macOS — with its barmy top-corner menus which just don’t work in a world of 4K screens — hasn’t. As to the commercial aspects of the OS, I was expecting it to ask me for a Microsoft account and it hasn’t, so that’s a plus. But the thing I had forgotten about was the ubiquity of nag screens. I haven’t had to click a “No, I don’t want to upgrade to your premium version” button in a very long time, and here I am suddenly having all manner of software wanting my attention. No Adobe Acrobat, I don’t want to give you any money! And then there’s the AI. Nothing in my Linux install is trying to offer me AI services, but it seems everything is here.

My jaunt into Windows land will be over when I’ve finished writing this piece, and I guess it’ll be as long again before I revisit this partition. Updating it took nearly three hours, and it’s constantly nagging me for paid upgrades, offering me news stories from sources I don’t like, and trying to push AI services on me. But is it a walled garden of crapware? That’s a more difficult question to answer. I’ve not had to enter a Microsoft account to use it, and I can install the software I want, so it’s not become the walled garden its detractors will tell you it has. The crapware though? Less clear cut.

This is a reseller laptop, so at least in theory, its original drive should have been wiped or even destroyed as part of a corporate data security scheme. So the reseller puts a cheap drive in and gives it a basic Windows install. It’s completely vanilla Windows 11, which is where it differs from many new laptops. There is no bundled software, no nagware, no commercial anti-virus, and no dubious-value security package. It’s as clean as Windows gets, but even so, there’s still too many features being pushed on me that I simply don’t want. It may not have old-style crapware installed, but the crap is still there.

So my final impression? This trip into Windows-land has been interesting, and I’ve found an OS better than I expected. But it’s reminded me again of the reasons why I moved on from dual-booting Windows XP all those years ago, with a lingering feeling that I still don’t quite own it.

Windows 11 then, it’s a daily driver for millions of people, but I still won’t be one of them.