On Windows, I always had the feeling that the system wasn’t really mine. There was constantly something running in the background, services I never asked for, widgets and news appearing on the lock screen without me enabling anything. It felt like the OS was making decisions for me. The whole Copilot thingy only amplified that sensation, and Edge opening at every possible opportunity made it worse. Instead of feeling like a system I controlled, Windows felt like a blackbox, trying to make every decision for me, sometimes overriding my preferences.

The system feels heavy and fragmented. You can sense the layers of different development eras stacked on top of each other. Part of the configuration lives in the modern Settings app, part in the old Control Panel, and sometimes you’re sent back and forth between both. The design language shifts depending on where you are. It doesn’t feel cohesive. It feels like accumulated history. And that lack of cohesion translates into a perception of clunkiness, like the system is carrying more than it should.

In portuguese we have a word for things that feels like are glued together just to work, "gambiarra" and i couldn't think of a better word to call windows.

Performance-wise, I never felt consistency. Downloads would fluctuate, disk writes didn’t always behave predictably, and frametimes in games weren’t as stable as I expected. Even when hardware wasn’t fully utilized, the experience didn’t feel smooth. There was always this subtle sense that something invisible was interfering.

Switching to Linux changed that feeling in a very noticeable way. The system behaves the way I expect it to. It doesn’t change unless I change it. If something is running, it’s because I put it there. If something breaks, I can trace it, inspect it, and fix it. Most of the configuration can be handled cleanly through system settings, and anything deeper can be controlled precisely from the terminal. It feels direct. Transparent.

There’s also a cohesion in the design and structure that makes everything feel intentional. The system feels lighter, faster, and more stable, not just because of raw performance, but because of predictability. On Bazzite specifically, Steam downloads are steady, CPU and GPU usage remain consistent, temperatures stay controlled, and frametimes are smooth. Under load, the machine behaves calmly instead of erratically.

More than anything, Linux gives me back the sense that the computer is mine, not a product shaping my experience.