Comment by davydm
4 hours ago
I gave up modding windows in any meaningful way after the several times I was left with a machine which was unstable, or had some other issue, or simply became 100% broken after a windows update was pushed to my machine.
It's a corporate operating system, not a user operating system. If you want to customise your desktop experience and have a stable time of it - this is not your platform, sorry. There is really only one platform for customisation: linux. Because distros and software there have been _designed_ around user choice.
Hacks are cool, but inevitably open up vulnerability pathways, not to mention issues with stability and being able to receive security patches, rolled into windows update. It's fine if it's just a personal pc you can reload at any point, but it's pointless for a machine that you require to keep functioning (eg a work machine, or, my personal machine, which does stuff like organise media on a regular basis).
Modding Windows often leads to frustrating stability issues, especially after updates. While Linux provides better customization with distros like Arch or Fedora, I've achieved some stability on Windows through setups like WSL2. Still, the inherent restrictions can limit the overall experience. For those prioritizing reliability and customization, exploring Linux is a wise choice.
Everyone is at different points in their journey. Let the DIwhy-ers have their moment. I used to want to mod out Windows XP to look like OS X. Then I had a realization that I just wanted OS X and got that as my next machine because I could.
A huge chunk of the population can’t afford to make that jump, or don’t have the will to learn a new OS.
> There is really only one platform for customisation: linux. Because distros and software there have been _designed_ around user choice.
At least older versions of Windows were quite modifiable: not as radical as on GNU/Linux, but there were a lot of possibilities.
Rather with the arrival of smartphones and rising popularity of macOS (which all were rather about "enjoying" a prescribed user experience), Microsoft did a U-turn and started applying this (anti-(?))pattern to Windows, too.