I was the exact same way. I could justify watching ads to support the people I watched, but then I learned how little compensation a creator actually gets from one view and decided my time was more valuable. Plus I just got too used to never seeing ads and could never go back.

This video sums up the sentiment you’re describing nicely.

Someone will be smuggling microfiche behind the iron curtain…wait wrong century.

Windows is becoming more of a shit show everyday, comically so. Glad I finally installed Linux Mint today. I’ve used Windows exclusively up until now and just quit cold turkey, putting Mint on my daily driver. I was hesitant to upend my computer habits by swapping OS, but I should have done this ages ago. I’m sure I’ll run into some kind of issue sooner than later, but I’ll take a technical problem over one manufactured by a corporation’s greed any day.

PowerToys is so useful. It’s the main thing I will miss if I ever switch to Linux. I’m sure there is software to replace most of the functionality on Linux, but I’ve yet to get the motivation to look into it.