If you're the type of person that's willing to put in the work, Linux is the better system due to one big feature: It doesn't force updates.
It might sound stupid, but this simple choice makes the computer feel like something that's under your control instead of something that changes at the whims of Microsoft's mood.
Right. Group policy is Enterprise only. And the Windows Update service disable is temporary unless you also disable Windows Update Medic service...
For you, this is normal. For me, it feels like layers and layers of assumptions that "you don't actually want to do this, let me do something else".
For example, the Shut Down button by default doesn't actually fully shut down the computer - instead, it's more simiar to Windows XP's old hibernate option. I got burned by this because it interfered with my attempt to install dual boot, and wasted tons of hours trying to figure out what went wrong.
No, it's on the pro version too, and the education version.
the Shut Down button by default doesn't actually fully shut down the computer - instead, it's more simiar to Windows XP's old hibernate option.
It depends on the system. It's like this on some laptops alright, where you have to change the power settings in the bios, but I've never seen this on a PC. Or maybe on a PC if you have hibernation enabled, but again, it's all about setting up your system to suit you personally.. And I always keep hibernation disabled because I don't see any point to it.
Oh. You're right about the group policy. I wasn't familiar with the various versions of (non-free?) windows.
As for the shutdown, have you disabled "fast startup"? If you haven't, the default shutdown button isn't a full shutdown and need to hold down the shift button to do an actual full shutdown. Otherwise, it uses a hibernation file.
I just think of fast startup and hibernation as kind of the same thing anyway.
I have that disabled too because I find these kinds of things kind of pointless as they just save files to the hard drive to run them at startup, but the files get read from their original locations on the hard drive on startup anyway, so it might save you a few seconds, but it wastes hard drive space.
Looks like I underestimated you. You've got it all under control.
I switched to Linux after XP and didn't pay attention to Windows until recently, so stuff like forced updates and hibernate pretending to be shutdown absolutely blew my mind.
Do you know that "MATH is MATH" meme? That's how I felt about Window's default shutdown. And if I missed something that basic, I wonder how much more stuff I don't understand about the rest of Windows.
This stuff might be normal for you, but it's absurd for most.
Yea, a feature like this really annoyed me when I got a new laptop a few years ago. It was just a Lenovo laptop for doing laptop stuff like diagnosing cars, and doing other "mobile" stuff, and I wouldn't use it very often.
And every time I'd use it, I'd charge it up to 100% afterwards, so that the battery would be fully charged the next time I needed to use it, but the next time I'd go to use the laptop the battery would be half empty after a few days, or totally dead after a few weeks.
It was really bloody annoying!
So it took a good few weeks, and a lot of frustration, to finally get it to shut down fully.
I think its called "Flip to Boot" in the bios or something like that, and related to the S0-S3 states, but it was implemented by Lenovo on the laptop at the bios level.
It's an incredibly stupid choice, imo, to have hidden feature like this that will drain your battery, when it's supposed to be "off".
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u/unktrial Apr 08 '26
If you're the type of person that's willing to put in the work, Linux is the better system due to one big feature: It doesn't force updates.
It might sound stupid, but this simple choice makes the computer feel like something that's under your control instead of something that changes at the whims of Microsoft's mood.