Linux

Buggy and laggy. I work with it and its a daily pain for my soul and mental health.

One pet peeve of mine is how in Windows 10 switching between virtual desktops was flawless, and somehow in Windows 11 they fucked it up. At first it had no animation when switching, the taskbar kind of glitches. Now it has an animation but it's kind of delayed and the taskbar still kind of glitches, it seems to reload or something. Kinda crazy honestly

Working there is apparently pretty nice. Microsoft on the inside is not Microsoft on the outside.

But regardless, terrible company with terrible products. Even if they didn't do anything shady, they still aren't great.

Microsoft has basically taken almost all businesses in the world hostage.
Once your staff is trained on MS products and your own stuff is fully connected to Azure, you're trapped and they can adjust prices to just below what you can bear.

Microsoft doesn't need a monopoly in the dying consumer desktop market anymore. That's why they're the top contributor to the Linux kernel, integrated a Linux layer into their OS, offer to save documents in an open format in Office, and host articles on how to install Linux in their documentation.

The year of the Linux desktop has finally come. Everyone who doesn't still run Windows 7, now has a Unix system installed on their PCs (and all other devices). It's just one that's distributed by Google, Microsoft or Apple.

does it matter how bad it is? does it matter how much shit is in a shit sandwich?

I'm not having it however little there is.

One word:

Recall.

Windows is the worst thing that ever happened to computer science.

And I don't exaclly mean the product itself, but the mindset and habits that came with it.

There is a lot out there on why from a lot of sources, so definitely not hard to do research on this. Definitely research the history of this company regarding anti-competition, Bill Gate's letter to hobbyists regarding intellectual property and markets (which touches on the whole proprietary vs FOSS suff). You can also just use their products for a while and see for yourself, note what you like and what you don't like (for me the latter is more likely), and make your own judgement.

IMO the title of "worst computer tech company" is essentially a tie between MS and Google right now, with the two constantly one-upping the other back and forth on stupid ideas and corporate practices.

No offence, but have you been living under a Microsoft shaped rock for the past 30 years?

The death of Windows means more people will come to Linux

Very bad

Microsoft is definitely the corpoest of them all.

Probably not the worst corpo, likely even, but out of the corpos, they are the most corpo corpo of any corpo.

1. They own LinkedIn, and I could just stop this list here.
2. They're the founding fathers of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish.
3. They are the vanguard of videogame studio consolidation, after buying Activision and Bethesda.
4. AI
5. Everything they do is soggy bread: you can eat it, it's probably mostly healthy, I think, but if a product is not the minimum viable product then it will be; take the Halo franchise as a reference for blandness, Windows for end user tolerance - both are controversial yet functional and popular software that people complain (and do nothing) about. Halo took quite a hit in popularity, but still...
6. Remember when a software company got in trouble for monopolistic practices? That was a thing that happened at some point, and it was Microsoft. Not that it will ever happen again, nowadays all the cool kids have some slice of the tech landscape on a chokehold.

1. Monopolistic business practices to crush competition (Netscape, Java, web browsers, etc.).

• Microsoft was found guilty of maintaining an illegal monopoly and engaging in anti-competitive tactics against competitors like Netscape Navigator and Java in the 1990s antitrust case.

2. Illegal bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows to eliminate browser rivals.

• The U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally bundling Internet Explorer with Windows to crush competition from other web browsers. Microsoft was found guilty of this tying arrangement.

3. Keeping useful Windows APIs secret from third-party developers to disadvantage competitors.

• Microsoft allegedly kept useful Windows APIs secret from third-party developers to give an advantage to their own applications, though this was not a central part of the antitrust case.

4. Embracing proprietary software and vendor lock-in tactics to prevent users from switching.

• Microsoft has been criticized for embracing proprietary software and vendor lock-in tactics that make it difficult for users to switch to alternatives, such as their failed attempts to establish OOXML as an open standard for Office documents.

5. "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" strategy against open source software.

• Microsoft has been accused of using the "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" strategy against open source software to undermine adoption of open standards. This is also shown in the leaked Halloween documents.

6. Privacy violations through excessive data collection, user tracking, and sharing data with third parties.

• Microsoft has faced scrutiny over privacy issues, such as the NSA surveillance scandal and their handling of user data with Windows 10.

7. Complicity in enabling government surveillance and spying on user data (PRISM scandal).

• The PRISM surveillance scandal revealed Microsoft's complicity in enabling government spying on user data.

8. Deliberately making hardware/software incompatible with open source alternatives.

• Microsoft has been accused of deliberately making hardware and software incompatible with open source alternatives through restrictive licensing requirements.

9. Anti-competitive acquisitions to eliminate rivals or control key technologies (GitHub, LinkedIn, etc.).

• Microsoft has acquired many companies over the years, sometimes in an effort to eliminate competition or gain control over key technologies and platforms.

10. Unethical contracts providing military technology like HoloLens for warfare applications.

• Microsoft's $480 million contract to provide HoloLens augmented reality tech for the military drew protests from employees and criticism over aiding warfare.

11. Failing to address workplace issues like sexual harassment at acquired companies.

• Microsoft's failed acquisition of gaming company Activision Blizzard raised concerns about ignoring workplace issues like sexual harassment at the acquired company.

12. Forced automatic Windows updates that override user control and cause system issues.

• Microsoft has faced backlash for forcing automatic updates on Windows users, including major updates that have caused issues like deleted files and crashed systems. Users have little control over when updates install.

13. Maintaining monopolistic dominance in productivity software and operating systems.

• Microsoft has maintained its dominance in areas like productivity software (Office) and operating systems (Windows), making it difficult for competitors to gain market share. This monopolistic position allows them to exert control over the industry.

14. Vague and toothless AI ethics principles while pursuing lucrative military AI contracts.

• Microsoft's AI ethics principles have been criticized as vague and toothless in light of their pursuit of lucrative military AI contracts.

15. Continued excessive privacy violations and treating users as products with Windows.

• Windows 10 has been criticized for excessive data collection and lack of user privacy controls, essentially treating users as products to be monetized.

16. Restrictive proprietary licensing that stifles open source adoption.

• Microsoft's proprietary software licensing makes it difficult for open source alternatives to be adopted widely, as they have a history of undermining open source software and interoperability with Windows.

This isn't even anywhere near everything.

What does "bad" means to you exactly? They are the hypocrites just like any big corporation, value only money, they reinvent wheels all the time, but their products pretty good despite being non-free, and making programs is much easier for Windows then GNU/Linux.

It would be even better if they didn't force you to use only their products.

You value simplicity or free of choice and privacy? The "bad" definition depends on it.

pretty much.

If you need a point for developers: all public code repositories hosted on GitHub are harvested, at least in 2021, and used to train copilot regardless of their license. Furthermore, GitHub is OWNED by Microsoft now.

Microsoft abuses their de facto monopoly to engage in gross invasion of their users' privacy, and continues to try to wrest their users' control of their system from them by altering system settings after updates, and making some settings nearly impossible to change. And that's to say nothing of MS's attempts to turn their operating system into and advertising platform.

I don't think the world is black or white. Of course Microsoft can make bad choices and prioritize profit, but Microsoft isn't a person or and entity. MS is an enterprise driven by people that work there.

Linux community or any other community can also make bad choices, afterall it's also people-driven and people are flawed.

I don't excuse MS for really bad choices, but also don't blame it. I just think that's better to see the world complex as it is, not by judging stuff as 'bad' or 'good'.

Impossible to know it, there isn't any other corporation who fight with M$, it is a perfect monopoly so it's impossible to figure out a world without it.

My point could be: you can't compare the actual reality to a hypothetical reality because the hypothetical reality isn't real. So how can you know it exactly?

Yes. During the entire history of MSDOS, Windows and Internet Explorer, there are so many things you can pick why Microsoft is bad. Now they even integrate Recall into Windows. I want to say that I always disconnected Xbox from Microsoft; and I'm not entirely sure why.

The question of this post is a bit misleading, because it implies that someone could answer with "no". Better question (in my opinion) is "How bad is Microsoft?".