Can't we just have a peaceful life without wasting time on constantly following and analyzing every single move from these companies?
At this point MS is a toxic company that you’re better off, as a user, to steer away from.
Not if you're using Microsoft products, no.
People continue to get irritated when "we" do this, but here I go: you should be running Linux exclusively on your personal computers. You should also stop buying "smart" shit.
All I can say is:
Linux does just about everything more efficiently than Windows, but Windows does just about everything better than Linux. What makes Linux so great is also what keeps it perpetually at ~5% adoption.
I'm probably going to go back to Windows again soon. I'm just not interested in needing to learn a bespoke computer language to get the most of of my PC.
I'm not like so many who seem to have to rationalize their choice of Linux or other free software by pretending it's actually technically better than the proprietary for-profit stuff. It's not about that.
Linux could get 10% of the battery life of Windows, have zero games, no Netflix/whatever support, and be slow as hell--I'd still choose it over proprietary options out of principle.
I want to own my computer. I don't want my computer to spy on me. Microsoft is literally adversarial to its users (Apple and Google are, too, but Apple at least has slightly different incentives that might make them less bad). Why would I invite that negativity into my life? Life is hard enough without trying to fight against a trillion dollar company for my privacy when I don't have to. It's that simple for me: I'm not inviting a Trojan horse in. But, people act like I'm some tinfoil hat nutjob. I think everyone else is crazy for sacrificing their privacy for "but Windows has a game I like".
Apologies for the preaching, but I don't know how to explain my point of view without it sounding like that!
I have, and I am still happy to be on Linux as my daily driver for over 20 years now.
No, we can't. Peaceful, content, satisfied, private, conscious makes less rent than disturbed, displeased, unsatisfied, surveilled. So while some people desire the first set, some others desire the second, and so, the cat-and-mouse game continues.