Easily Ubuntu. Despite its general wonkiness and kind of a shit attitude towards upstreams, at least they’re not shoving mandatory tracking into all of your orifices, and aren’t integrating AI into everything because fuck you, you’ll like it.

It’s disappointing to see that a dozen or so people decided to hit your post with drive-by downvotes, rather than using their words to express themselves in a way that actually contributes to this community.

Your question is a legitimate one, especially at a time when Windows is increasingly bloated and invasive, spyware is out of control, and Linux is increasingly a viable alternative even in certain tough areas like games. I just wish you had elaborated on why you singled out Ubuntu when several other widely-supported Linux distributions exist.

If those were my only two options, I would pick Ubuntu over Windows, no contest. I would replace its default desktop with KDE Plasma (or just choose the Kubuntu variant in the first place), rip out as much of Snap as I could, update the kernel, and migrate to a distro that I like better whenever I was able.

For what it’s worth, Debian Stable with a few hand-picked backports and flatpacks suits me well, mainly for gaming and software development. (I’m a bit of an outlier, though: having my system be low-maintenance is more important to me than always having the latest features in every app, and I’ve been known to make my own debian packages and flatpaks when something I want isn’t ready-made.) Linux Mint, Pop_OS, and Arch Linux are also popular. There are many more.

If I had to choose between those two, I would choose Ubuntu without fail. However, I am currently using Linux Mint Debian Edition and really enjoying Cinnamon and the fact that it is based on Debian and not Ubuntu.

Ubuntu, because it’s the base for my Linux Mint XFCE.

IF between the 2, Ubuntu in Xubuntu or Lubuntu.

archlinux

Windows 11 Enterprise IoT LTSC. The way Windows was supposed to be, bullshit free. Like a fresh XP install. Feels good to game on a W11 that doesn’t fight you, nor installs so much damn bloat all the time.

Just doing the lords work for those stuck on Windows, and who are unaware: massgravedotdev

Windows 10. It’s easy to use and never breaks. I miss elements of windows 7, but overall I think 10 is more stable.

I did not like Ubuntu when i used it.

Vanilla Ubuntu vs. Windows 10? I’ll take Windows.

If it’s like Kubuntu or Xubuntu vs. Windows 11, then I’ll take Ubuntu, but currently my jam is Debian with XFCE.

While Ubuntu only ever metes out the occasional beating with things like spy lens, Windows has really been hitting it out of the park consistently. It is rivaled only maybe by Mac & iOS when it comes to punishing users for making stupid decisions. Their silently replacing local files with fronted copies served from MS’s own “cloud” was a real banger. I can’t wait to see what creative new ways they’ll come up with next to make normies suffer.

Certainly Ubuntu. But fortunately I have more options to choose from.

Honestly, this isn’t much of a hypothetical for me. At work, my choices are Windows, Mac, or Ubuntu. I’m quite happy with Ubuntu, though I’ve switched away from the default desktop environment to i3.

I use Arch (BTW) on my personal systems. And Ubuntu isn’t as bad as I worried it would be.

My main gripe is snaps. Firefox is practically unusable as a snap. And my employer forbids installing any software (save for a select list of exceptions) not via the officially-supported Ubuntu way of doing things. Chrome is available without snap, so I use it on my work machine. Which annoys me, but if I’m less efficient in my job as a result, it’s their own fault.

Yeah, Ubuntu overall, but it depends on which version of each.

Windows 7, I’m so familiar with and have a collection of programs for without having to download anything, it would be fine for my needs, neither better or worse than Ubuntu. The only inherent improvement for my use case is the up to date security of a newer, supported OS.

I don’t game on pc currently because it just fucking hurts to sit in the chair long enough to play anything worth playing. I don’t do anything that requires Adobe products. That means Linux is going to be as good as an out of date windows on any version from the same time as when 7 lost support, and likely older versions too. There’s no functional difference in the kind of use I’d put either to. Again my use case.

So it comes down to security between versions.

Now, if I’m forced to pick between any more recent windows versions and any Ubuntu version, no way am I using windows unless it’s via VM. 8 was bad enough I wasn’t willing to move from 7. 10 jumped the shark and made me start using Linux to begin with. 11? Fuck no. Just no. Won’t do it. Won’t buy anything that has it and can’t be immediately loaded with something else.

However, canonical can fuck itself with snaps. Ubuntu works fine, I have no issues with anything other than snap really. I prefer mint w/cinnamon for my debian offspring, but that’s a different subject.

Ubuntu was the first distro I tried back when windows 10 came out and it became obvious what Microsoft was really trying to do. It was good enough that I dual booted with it and windows 7 for a long while, until I tried mint/cinnamon.

That computer still dual boots 7 and mint, it’s my media player. No internet connection, and whatever version of mint was on there when I got my newer box. I would have moved out to mint only, but musicbee. Can’t stand the available music players for Linux. I’ve tried them all over the years, and they can’t hold up to musicbee’s features. I also haven’t had success with the available ways to use musicbee on linux. I try every year or two though.

Windows

If I had to pick, Ubuntu.

What I’d actually pick: Fedora

Workstation Edition (Gnome) or Plasma Edition (KDE Plasma), whatever your UX preference, with Gnome being more polished, minimalist, distraction-free, and Plasma being like Windows out of the box but much more powerful and customisable.

The name unfortunately conjures images of the tips fedora/m’lady meme, but the name predates that, and it’s a solid and well-supported distro that gets better with every update.

Arch, btw