Boy, the good ole days are gone when it comes to Windows. I am posting just to help anybody that doesn’t know. This is like a creepy wire tap. If you are actually using Windows 11, make sure to disable and or reduce telemetry in Windows 11 (Privacy). If that actually helps, I am sure there are more ways they send data back but the video link is a simple how to for the telemetry. Here is more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wtg_s1GQiMU
My reason is really simple: replacing Windows with Bazzite or whatever would be a lot of effort. If W11 ever bricks itself or does something hideously invasive (that I can’t disable or opt out of) then it becomes less of an effort than maintaining the status quo, and thus switching becomes the obvious choice.
Linux doesn’t even require installation, they use LiveCDs that you can use as temporary OS’s. They are also used to permanently install them if you’d like to do that.
There’s a guy at my local library that brings his own OS to use on the public computers, and just saves stuff on removable storage.
We all have our limits - yours is a fair point of ease vs inconvenience. I think that is the market dominant force. That being said with how far any distro has come since I started messing around in 98… It’s close to being that easy.