Hey, how's it going. How's Windows 11 been treating you? Yeah? That bad, eh? Yeah. I hear you. So apparently does Microsoft because according to president of Windows and devices, Pavan Davuluri, 2026 is the year in which Microsoft makes Windows 11 suck a little less.
Speaking with The Verge, Davuluri says that Microsoft needs to "improve Windows in ways that are meaningful to people. This year you will see us focus on addressing pain points we hear consistently from customers: improving system performance, reliability, and the overall experience of Windows." Huge, if true.
According to The Verge's reporting, some of these improvements include actually having a proper dark mode in Windows 11 and modernizing parts of the operating system that have gone untouched for well over a decade. Other notable "pain points" brought up include the performance issues present with Explorer and how there are often times where games will perform way better on Linux than on Windows.
Of course, this really isn't the first time Microsoft promised to improve performance or fix long standing bugs in Windows 11.
If Microsoft's goal is to make Windows 11 a better operating system in 2026, they're off to an abysmal start. The very first update for Windows 11 introduced several rather severe bugs. These bugs include, but were not limited to: Users not being able to actually shut down the computer, crashes for OneDrive and Dropbox, authentication failures with remote desktop connections, and hibernation failures. Microsoft has had to release two emergency out-of-band (OOB) updates after the usual patch Tuesday to address these issues.
Of course, it's hard to ignore the elephant in the room: Microsoft's incessant push to force their Copilot AI into literally every aspect of Windows 11. While Davuluri is supposedly keen to improve Windows 11, what he wants isn't necessarily what will pan out. After all, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is still hell bent on shoving AI into everyone's face. That is to say, more AI will almost certainly be added to Windows 11 before the year's end. Let's just hope that Duvuluri is able to implement even half of the mentioned Windows 11 improvements while still keeping his boss happy.
If anything, I'd like to try either CachyOS or I also heard Bazzite was good.
The problem I keep reading though is that Nvidia GPUs are still lacking on Linux performance. Even recent tests from LTT show that Nvidia is real close but still a bit short of the mark. Then there's the anti-cheat stuff that doesn't work in Linux and blah blah blah...
Not to mention that I apparently don't currently own a thumb drive large enough for either of those distros to even install to test. Which, still totally fine.
I'd still eventually like to get a dual boot up and running some day. Keep Windows for most games I play. Linux for work. We'll see.
I've read good things about Bazzite, same with Nobara (which I have good things to report about).
I'm fine with just turning it off in the BIOS when I run Linux.