Rejecting Modernity: Microsoft is a Stinky (and Sloppy) Company

So.. Microsoft. What isn't wrong with them that hasn't ended up in people abandoning their operating systems at the very first turn?

Certain world events regarding Microsoft has caused their image to fall apart, including them being in cahoots with the Israelis, something that, on it's own, has caused it's own boycott from the people who support the Palestinians, and that was originally the main reason for this guide existing. But while that reasoning can still be applied to this guide, the main reason why this guide was written was because of a new thing Microsoft has done: going fully off the deep end when it comes to AI.

They've decided to go all in on it, and are starting to rebrand everything as such, making all of their services run on Copilot, which as we've seen from OpenAI, is basically a death knell to privacy as a whole, and that is one way to bream any trust from your own audience.. as well potentially vibe coding a C++ to Rust translation, something that, in short, could just very well break Windows 11 as a whole, forcing people to either switch OSes, or recommit on forcing people to swap to Linux, something an entire video warned people not to do.

Now, you might be saying, "You're paranoid, they're not going to fully pivot into using abusing AI, rebrand everything to use Copilot, and vibe code their entire operating system, that'd just be plain dumb, would probably set them up for failure, would've resulted in multiple migrations to Linux without fault straight away, and would've probably bankrupted them" And that's what I initially thought too, until multiple recent decisions made me think otherwise.

See, thanks to a YouTube video, I got to find out how stupid Microsoft's push towards AI really was: Microsoft has entirely rebranded Office, yet again. Now, the original rebrand? Dumb, but I got what they were getting at with Office 365: a cloud-based Office, meant to be carried around everywhere, running on a subscription. Originally Microsoft 365 was meant to be the name for this consolidated family of apps across multiple platforms across the cloud, that had apps like Teams, OneDrive, and Outlook as well as the Office Suite, meaning Office was rebranded to Office 365. (yes 365 and Office 365 are indeed completely different from each other despite the fact that they basically aren't) Yes, it still was corporate greed, but it was corporate greed with a soul, and while that soul was plagued with bad intentions, at least it had something.

The rebrand that they're currently doing? Soulless, and abysmal enough to make anyone looking in immediately turn away from using anything Microsoft-related. I say this, because as far as I know, Office was, just recently, rebranded into 365's Copilot app, despite the fact Copilot has multiple standalone apps for every platform with Microsoft apps, as well as a web version.

Whuh?

Assuming all this is true, that means the thing that we've using to, oh, I don't know.. make entire documents, spreadsheets and such has been rebranded with AI, meaning if you wanted to make a document, you'd allegedly have to do it through Copilot, and with the fact that Microsoft probably vibe-coded their most recent Windows updates, breaking entire computers, and outright told people not call Microsoft "slop" (even banning people off their own Discord server for doing so, and then locked said server down entirely), it's been made very apparent that Microsoft has became an "AI first, consumers last" company. They've ruined themselves, and we, as a collective, has had enough.

With all of this, it's about time a comprehensive guide steps up to the bat. I can't support Microsoft anymore, and to convince you to join the cause, it's time to sit you down, and give you some pointers to let you make the decision of moving away from Microsoft, and joining something more supportive.

These are my suggestions to stop supporting Microsoft to the best of your ability.


Away With Game Pass, Away With The Store, and Away With The Consoles

If you have a Game Pass subscription, I suggest shutting down and cancelling your current subscription. Even if you're planning to use it to play video games, you will not need it for what you're planning to do later.

If you're using the Microsoft Store, prohibit yourself from using it, and just use .exe or .msi installers instead, you don't really need the Microsoft Store.

Why? Well, there are many reasons why, but let me list some to help convince you:

  • Game Pass has slowly became too overpriced and multiple price hikes for Ultimate and Essential have practically made owning Game Pass the equivalent of getting a mortgage to do so.. Like seriously, you need $30 a month to be able to subscribe to their Ultimate tier, while Disney+, another subscription service, is $19 a month for their ad-free tier, jeez.
  • The Microsoft Store and it's installer is, unfortunately, is one of the many Microsoft apps that have telemetry, despite the fact that they shouldn't, and before 2025/2026, every app in the Microsoft Store contained an executable .NET wrapper that smuggles telemetry, which can also be hijacked, making it, basically, a free, open backdoor for hackers which, at this point, proves that Microsoft itself is a national security risk.
  • Both of these have better options (i.e. just using executables and .msi installers), and even then, later on, depending on how far you're going to be willing to follow this guide, the Xbox App or the Microsoft Store may never become accessible to you ever again, so I suggest cutting yourself off now before you start doing anything else in this list.

If you wish to buy games without the Xbox App or the Microsoft Store, but don't know how to do so, the easiest route to take is https://www.gog.com, a DRM-free way to buy your games. The fun part is that a lot of indie games end up there including, I shit you not, Silksong, meaning you've just found a new storefront for indie games, something that will come into play in a future installment.

There's also another route you can take if you don't wanna buy games in general.. you can of course, pirate your games as well so that you can carry everything around with absolutely no DRMs, and freedom to launch your software without having to do it through a launcher. I, of course, can't tell you how to do it though, as I've said before, law says it's illegal to tell people how to pirate, but not to suggest people that you should.

I'd also suggest putting to rest your Xbox account and only use it when the time comes, because as one Bruhity has found out the hard way, thanks to a certain UK act, all Xbox accounts, worldwide, will permanently lose the ability to use social features as of 2026, making it impossible to chat on Xbox, unless you verify your account's age. And much like Roblox, this is a complete and utter censorship for anyone willing to use their Xbox.. meaning if you're vehement on not giving up your ID anytime soon, congratulations, your Xbox account is now a social paperweight.

If you're one of the many people who happen to own an Xbox, I suggest factory resetting it in order to prepare to sell it. Assuming the AI bubble pops during the time you're reading this, you can use the cash you got from this to invest in a gaming PC, laptop, or one of those Steam Machines. I also suggest getting this done as quickly as possible before that one law forcing people to use IDs for devices affects your Xbox.


Do Away with the Games

So, you're a gamer who's interested in Microsoft-owned games, but you're also following this guide.. what do you do to adapt to this guide, while still gaming? Well, there are a few pointers for our gamers out there!

Regarding Minecraft, it's fine but I'd advise further actions if needed. Recent discoveries as well as chat restrictions have proven this topic very iffy, as we can't really.. directly tell people to stop playing Minecraft itself. For more information on what I mean, check this link here. If you are still vehement on this guide, think that rejecting modernity also affects Minecraft to the point that playing the game proves to be impossible because Microsoft just sucks that much, and you just want a quick way to escape without having to go to the extra mile, may I suggest playing Hytale as a replacement?

For Call of Duty, there are fan run versions of older CoD titles. The recent titles still have Microsoft backing them and from recent examples, use generative AI, something I've covered in the first Rejecting Modernity. With Microsoft's recent decisions in making everything have to use age verification for social features, we actually did find out what happened to the Call of Duty games, in terms of this update: you permanently lose the ability to play multiplayer on those games, unless you give up your ID.. and assuming the game only has multiplayer, that game is permanently locked behind an age gate.

Regarding Candy Crush, King technically no longer owns it, Microsoft does, and assuming the worst, they are most definitely going to inject generative AI into Candy Crush. However... who honestly cares about Candy Crush apart from people who are above 50 years of age?

Finally, for Activision and Bethesda games, just don't bother. You will end up supporting two (three) scummy companies who cares more about the cash than the people, and because Microsoft owns these companies, there's gonna be a very likely chance that they will also use generative AI, something that once again, I covered before. Also.. Activision Blizzard will be most likely forced to do the age verification thing to all of their games, not just because of Microsoft.. but because of California. Remember that Activision Blizzard's main offices are in Santa Monica, California. California was one of the two countries to suggest making an OS-wide age verification system. It's only a matter of time before they force Activision Blizzard to perform age checks.

If you still care about your money, it's heavily suggested you pirate these, and again, I can't tell you how to do it since law dictates it's illegal to do so, but I'm sure you'll figure a way out sooner or later. Here's a tip though, avoid any website that tries to fake you out into giving up your information, and remember to always use Adblock when you sail the seven seas, because there are gonna be a lot of pop ups when you perform this action, so best better be safe than sorry.


Move Your Body Freely

Another one for our gamers, if you're still following along, I suggest using other controllers aside from Xbox's own. you might be asking why, and that's very simple. From experience, they have bad stick drift. Like really bad stick drift. Like, you'll have a very unfortunate time playing Fortnite with a controller, and can't even play other 3D games on PC bad.. and also, and this is coming from personal experience of owning three entire Xbox controllers, they tend to break a lot more often than any of the suggestions listed below, and if you're not careful, they could even break within the first few days of you buying it, or even in an entire hour.

The same Bruhity who discovered that Xbox is censoring people via ID verification, suggested that you should buy a Dualsense (A Dualsense is typically good, lasts a while, and even has motion support and touch controls), while I suggest buying non-Xbox Razer controllers, such as the Razer Wolverine (Razer controllers are pretty quality), or any 8BitDo controllers (they tend to be pretty modern and budgetable).

The choice is up to you, however.


Forget OneDrive.

If you're still following along with with this guide, OneDrive will become unusable to you. Not like you need it anyways, because by the time you'll install Linux in the next point, a lot of Microsoft stuff will not be accessible to you.

For cloud systems, I suggest using an open source cloud system like Nextcloud, buy two to three SSDS to make up the equivalent of most of the storage you back up, or turn your old computer into a file server using this tutorial.

For other equivalents to Microsoft products, ask around in certain subreddits, or search around on the internet in general. However, I will throw you a bit of a bone when it comes to this topic and tell you that of your Linux replacements may be, or already have been, covered in multiple other guides, including a few upcoming for Google and Adobe. So make sure to keep a close eye on that while you're reading the future installments.

And it's now time for our final point, a point I've been spreading around here and there on multiple threads and YouTube channels. So.. it's about time I finally come clean, and tell you why explicitly..


Linux is Growing Bigger and Better with Time

So, you happen to be a Windows user (if you're not, good for you). Your operating system may be clean, it may be convenient, and hell, you may not even have to worry about any nonsense going on in the tech world. However, your operating system may not be as perfect and as flawless as you think.

There are many kinks out there when it comes to Windows, and I'm about to hit you with the truth when it comes to the reason why a lot of people are switching off from Windows, and why I think doing so is the right call, as of right now. Remember that this is your decision. However, I will give you some reasonings as to why I think switching off is a good reccomendation.

In these few months, something has started to become clear related to Microsoft and it's genuinely saddening for the very few programmers and users out there: They have decided to stop caring about their customers to the point where they have the gall to make it so that the things their very customers have paid for.. no longer belong to them, including the very computer and operating system they own.

Microsoft has fully decided to disable local accounts unless you're adding another user, meaning you have to make an account if you want to sign into your computer. All bypasses that originally worked, like using [email protected], using registry edits, and even disconnecting Wi-Fi no longer work.

This is to, "prevent skipped configuration steps and ensures devices are properly set up and secure". While this is clearly a breach of privacy, and makes Windows 11 essentially online only, where the real problem settles in, is when 2027 rolls in, and the whole US government and Microsoft decide "oh, you also have to give us your government ID just to sign into your account". If you've been adamant on not giving up your ID,³ this potentially could mean you'll just be locked out of your computer, unable to use it because you can't sign in unless you verify your age. Before you say "they wouldn't do that", remember that Australia made is so that you have to verify your age to even use the internet, and California and Colorado both made laws suggesting the idea.

And not like that future or point matters anyways, because it's already happening, for the exact second you forget about your Microsoft account password, you'll be locked out anyways, thanks to Microsoft's whole online-only ordeal! Even excessively restarting your PC can lock you out!

Every Windows Update seems to do something extremely cataclysmic. 24H2 had it's own myriad of problems, including bugs that Microsoft genuinely had all the time in the world to fix, 25H2 may or may not gain the ability to miraculously delete your entire hard drive, including the operating system itself, essentially bricking itself, the second recent patch update was so bad, it genuinely broke entire applications, and bricked computers, doing the same moves 25H2 did, but worse, and it got to the point where even Microsoft themselves even said to avoid the update until they patch in a fix to stop it from being bad, basically requiring you to either downgrade or completely switch off from Windows, and the recent security patch... deletes your Internet! No, I'm not joking, this patch deletes the DHCP client service (because of course it does), and makes the computer boot loop itself, and that's not even counthing the fact that avoiding any of these catastrophic updates in the first place is going to prove to be a very physical challenge when everyone is practically forced into getting this update. How do you screw up that badly?

And the worst one, a reason so bad, I generally have to brace myself...

Microsoft is getting ready to transition their C and C++ coding to Rust.

Now this usually wouldn't be a problem, Rust is typically safer than C, Linux itself uses Rust, and unless you're using it for game development, Rust is typically seen as the bigger brother.. where the problem actually begins is HOW they're doing it: vibe-coding the whole translation via AI. Yes, they decided it would be a fun idea to try using AI to translate C++ coding to Rust, and the problem with this is that, well, Al when it is mainly used for coding, tends to get a lot of things wrong. As we've seen from many game dev videos that attempt to use ChatGPT in order to generate a game... most of the time, it generates a metric shitton of errors.. Microsoft is planning to use said technology to attempt to translate an entire codebase to another one. Ouch.

That.. and Windows has relied on the C language for a while now.. and with the fact translation is being done via AI, it'll be riddled with bugs, incompatibility, and app complication.

Remember, we're talking about a jump in coding languages, meaning developers that made apps that originally used C++ are now going to have to find a way to translate C++ into Rust, or Microsoft will have to find some way to give app developers an official way to translate C++ into Rust. This will also mean that optimization will end up being next-to-impossible.

..and even worse, this planned update to eliminate C++ from Windows.. is specifically for Windows 11. Yup, Microsoft isn't deciding to test this on, say, Windows 12, where they have more freedom in how to code things, no, this is a Windows 11 update. That means there is a high likelihood that this is a major update.. and major updates in Windows 11 are typically forced, a thing that has made the forbidden updates that breaks your computer an unavoidable obstacle. This big C++ to Rust update is one you won't have a way of opting out of.. ..which may very well render your Windows 11 install permanently unusable if this fails, or render your computer obsolete, depending on whether Rust coding will require newer PCs (yes this may make it so that you might not have the proper PC to run Windows 11 anymore).

This has unfortunately made Linux the nuclear bunker, when it comes to this update. Eventually, you're gonna have to make a decision on whether or not you want to switch to Linux, or permanently downgrade to Windows 10, and this switch is going to be massively devastating right now, but trust me, it will be worth it in the long run. This is your decision after all, however, I will give you some pointers on how to install Linux just in case you want to book it from Windows as a whole. This isn't a full-on tutorial but rather, a push for you to get started.

For your first step, I suggest looking up tutorials on how to install Linux and how to get drivers working on Linux. I, and many others, suggest Zorin or Mint as your first choice, dual-booted or on a live USB. If you're a beginner, you probably don't need the heavy complications of normal Linux.

If you're a gamer, you could also dual-boot Bazzite on your PC as Bazzite is as close to SteamOS as it gets when it ccomes to games, and SteamOS is basically a gaming-centric Linux OS. I also suggest trying it out on a Live USB first. See if it's okay for you, if it's up to your standards, then start installing.

I'd also suggest backing up any files you have first before doing so, because this process will wipe out your entire hard drive and replace it with Linux.

Finish any unfinished business you have with Windows, THEN install Linux. That, and you may want to look for equivalent apps that you had on Windows, or apps that you can run with Proton or Wine, before jumping in.

Even if this is up to your decision, I do suggest you make this decision quickly, however, there's a high likely chance Microsoft won't be allowing you to do this very easily anymore.

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Pub: 18 Feb 2026 17:54 UTC

Edit: 07 Apr 2026 22:37 UTC

Views: 98