However, at that time I had no idea about the existence of the "S mode". I could not install on the laptop some applications that were distributed and used internally in the company and which were essential for my work.
I requested assistance from the IT department, but at that time not even they had any idea about the existence of the "S mode", so they were equally baffled why on my previous Dell laptop I could easily install any application, while on its new replacement I could not. For a couple of weeks, various IT support people from teams located on several continents had repeatedly connected remotely to my laptop every day, trying to solve the problem, but without any success.
Even the OEMs that do offer the option to have Linux pre-installed keep pushing for "Works best with Windows".
What is a non technical user to do, the choice ends up being macOS, Windows, or ChromeOS thin clients.
As I have mentioned, in another comment, some years ago I had the same problem when replacing an old corporate laptop with a new one, but at that time nobody from the IT support knew about the existence of the "Windows S mode".
At that time, seeing that none of many IT support people could do anything, I assumed that there was some kind of miscommunication inside the IT department, and there was some administrator who had configured some kind of secure Windows mode on my laptop, but the others were not aware about this.
Now I know that the laptop had come like this directly from Dell, but for some reason the IT department did not know about it.
That button simply doesn't work. I forget the exact error message, but it was something generic and unhelpful. (Spoiler: none of the other solutions in the first few pages of search results worked, either.)
"Just make a new account." It's possible but then we'd have to make sure we get every single saved game for all the various games moved over and ugh.
Every single game save? Why? I get it if you are deep into a month long Factorio game or have a huge Minecraft world, but on the whole games are ephemeral entertainment. If it's not worth backing up, it's usually fine to just start a new game.
And was Windows 11 bug free, no. Was it easier to use, no. Absolutely irritating OS.
I used to dread seeing the EAC splash because it inevitably meant frequent crashes on windows, with no such issues on Linux.
There was no way to use this expensive purchase from the kid's account on the same machine! Stupid bullshit - I gave up on Windows from then on.
Not everything. I say: use the option to switch to Linux.
I installed PopOS and Steam for my 11 y/o. She games either on her Nintendo Switch (not Microsoft) or on her iPad (not Microsoft) or on Linux (not Microsoft).
Wife works from a Debian desktop PC, so do I.
Microsoft is not allowed in this house.
Something that isn't available to everyone.
Yeah Web version will do, if everything you need is doable with Microsoft Works, and no collaboration with others is required.
Google docs serves my word processing needs, then again I don't do anything at home that wasn't already possible in Word 2.0 for Windows 3.1, Wordpad, or AmigaWriter.
Recently moved desktop to Linux though so hopefully don’t need to deal with them again