I bought a new laptop.
I opened it up and powered it on. It booted up and started taking me through the setup process. After more than thirty minutes of downloading updates, I cancelled the update (which was 15% complete!) because I was ready to move on.
What followed was awful. I counted at least twenty different screens prompting me to sign up for Microsoft services, use Copilot, customize my experience, restore from backups, set up new backups, subscribe to Office 365, install Microsoft’s gaming platform, consent to advertising and transmission of my personal data (“to personalize my experience” of course), and on and on. I couldn’t believe how many things I had to click Skip or Do this later to get past. It probably took me another fifteen minutes to wade through this morass of services I don’t want.
Now, nearly an hour later, it’s well past midnight and I finally have the Windows desktop before me. Hallelujah. I opened a command shell, ran a quick command to find my Windows product key, and shut down the laptop. (I’m hoping to use the product key for a Windows virtual machine I need to run in order to prepare my taxes, but that’s a tale for another day.)
Tomorrow I’ll install Linux and KDE on the laptop. From long experience, I know the entire installation process will take around ten minutes. When it’s done, I’ll be able to boot up the fresh installation and login immediately. No ads, no offerings, no requirements for email and phone number, no subscriptions. It’ll just work.