These 4 new Windows features might convince me to switch from Linux

Published Jul 24, 2026, 6:30 AM EDT Aggy is a veteran writer and editor in the technology and gaming space. Having served as a Managing Editor for high-traffic digital publications, alongside being an editor and consultant for over a dozen sites. Aggy's published work spans a wide and respected array of tech and gaming outlets, including WePC, Screen Rant, How-To Geek, Android Police, PC Invasion, and Try Hard Guides. Beyond editorial work, Aggy's direct experience in the tech sphere extends to app development. Aggy has published two games under Tales and is always eager to learn and do more. He also likes working on computers and researching in his spare time. He knows about Windows, Linux, Audio, Video, and much more. Windows gets a lot of criticism, and plenty of people have switched to Linux because of the issues with the OS. While Microsoft doesn't have the best track record with Windows 11, thanks to all the bugs, the company has done a good job bringing in features that make me think twice about running to Linux entirely. This round of updates actually added many features I liked. WSL is pretty good WSL makes Linux containers run much faster WSL Containers builds on top of the existing WSL 2 setup instead of trying to make something completely new. Instead of spinning up a whole new virtual machine architecture, it just adds container support on top of the paravirtualized VM that WSL 2 already uses, which runs a full Linux kernel through Hyper-V. The container runtime has its own hypervisor engine tuned for OCI containers, but the underlying VM works the same way it always has. That means your WSL 2 distros and containers can live on the same machine without getting in each other's way. The more interesting piece is the GPU and NPU access. Through the Container Device Interface, Linux workloads can reach your GPU using Windows drivers, almost as directly as they would on a native Linux install. That makes things like CUDA pipelines possible without needing a separate Linux machine sitting around. File system performance also gets some long-overdue attention. WSL 2 has always had a latency problem with file-heavy workloads because everything was being routed through the 9P protocol over virtual sockets. Virtiofs is an opt-in alternative that uses VirtIO's shared-memory model to cut down on serialization overhead. On top of that, a recent kernel update gives each virtio device its own dedicated DMA memory pool, whether it's handling storage or networking. That removes contention at the bounce-buffer layer and clears out one of the last remaining bottlenecks on the file I/O path. App sorting works locally without tracking you Windows 11's Start menu has always been a sore spot, but I think the recent updates make a huge difference. The old alphabetical list of shortcuts is gone and has been replaced by a single-page layout that feels a lot easier to navigate than one long list. The new Category view sorts your installed apps into groups like Productivity, Utilities, Games, Entertainment, and Developer Tools. This reminds me of how the App Library works on phones. I was kind of hesitant about this because I assumed Microsoft had found a way to shoehorn Copilot in, but none of this relies on cloud services or AI. It's all handled locally by a 15MB JSON file that maps each app to a category the moment it's installed. You can now rename the "Recommended" section to "Recent" and control exactly what shows up there. You can toggle off things like usage tips, browsing history, or recently added apps, so the menu only shows what's actually relevant to you. It's the kind of control that developers and enthusiasts have wanted for a long time. This reminds me of KDE Plasma or GNOME, though it isn't perfect. Niche apps that don't fit neatly into a category get lumped into a catch-all "Other" folder, which isn't the end of the world. If you get enough apps into the same category, a new one will be made. You can move the taskbar now Custom layouts make Windows feel more like Linux Credit: Lucas Gouveia/How-To Geek You can now move the taskbar to the top, left, or right side of your screen. It is something that should have been added years ago, but better late than never. So you can work from a top bar like GNOME or a side dock like Unity. Windows 11 launched with the taskbar locked to the bottom, and it stayed that way for years. Microsoft also added a compact mode, letting you shrink the taskbar down to free up screen space, and right-clicking the taskbar now gives you a quick way to the settings. For anyone picky about their desktop layout, this matters. It removes one of the bigger annoyances keeping people away from Windows, and it shows Microsoft is actually paying attention to power users. Little things like this matter a lot to me. Android phone sync works right from Start Moving files and clipboards is easy Credit: Justin Duino / How-To Geek One of the hardest things to give up when switching back to a commercial OS is something like KDE Connect. It's been on Linux for years, and it lets you share clipboards, send files over your local network, and mirror notifications between your phone and desktop without much fuss. Windows had its own version of this, but it didn't work very well. I have some computers on Windows 10 that have so many issues. What a lot of people don't realize is that Windows 11 has built something very similar to KDE Connect right into the Start menu, and it holds up surprisingly well. You turn this on by going through Personalization settings and toggling "Show mobile device in Start." Once enabled, a small phone icon appears in the top right of your Start menu, giving you a live look at your Android phone's battery, connectivity, recent activity, texts, and call history. You don't need any third-party apps, and it doesn't get more complicated than a button press and a setup. While it isn't a portal into your phone, it does give you a lot. Your last 2,000 photos are accessible directly from that panel, and you can drag them straight into whatever you're working on. Clipboard syncing is fast too. Windows has a lot to offer this time around Not every change here is as good as it can be, but that's not the point. Windows is actively adding features that compete with Linux in a bigger way, which is a win for everyone. If you've written off Windows as a development or productivity environment, some of these changes are worth a second look before you decide it's still not worth your time.