The Windows installation I have has been reverted back to Windows 7 from Windows 8 after using the Consumer Preview the impression I got from it shows that Microsoft will create another Windows Millennium Edition, it is better to use Windows 7 if you must use Windows at all. The only thing that is aggravating about the wünderbar world of Windows is the necessity to install updates during shutdown and then once you start Windows up again it then spends grating amounts of time configuring the installed updates. Why can they not install updates whilst Windows is running? Linux can install updates while the software is running, if you update something like GDM or your Gnome desktop then you can just type sudo service gdm stop to shutdown the Xorg session and then restart the gdm service to reload the software to see the changes. Windows could be so much better if they would fix this and allow patches to be applied whilst Windows is running, then it would be convenient for the user, especially with a fresh installation of Windows 7 that is installing the patch Tuesday backlog and it takes ages to install 67 updates during shutdown. I am considering replacing Windows 7 with FreeBSD 9.0, that would be better behaved than Windows. The GEM/KMS support is not planned for FreeBSD until 10.0 but there is a patch available that can add preliminary support for the KMS code.
The FreeBSD project has less support than Linux, with the Google Android code merged into the Linux kernel 3.3, this will be a great boon for the Android project and for Linux. If only the FreeBSD project could have a large corporate entity behind them to supply more programmers to help out with hardware support, the Linux kernel has supported KMS for a while and FreeBSD is only just getting this with the effort of a lone programmer that is working on support for modern graphics chip-sets. Windows does not support the integrated graphics supplied by the Intel i3 CPU until you install the drivers from your driver disc. I do not remember doing that with Windows 8, the hardware detection and fetching drivers from the Internet has improved but my overall impression of the Windows 8 operating system is negative, Windows 7 is nice, but using Wine I can run applications that I need without needing to load Windows all the time. Windows needs major improvements to the process of installing patches and updates should be made available while the operating system is running, installing updates while the operating system is shutting down, that only slows down the shutdown, and is very aggravating when you are impatient to shut down the Windows operating system and load Linux. I ended up flicking the switch on the power supply out of frustration.
Linux Mint 12 is far less frustrating to use than Windows when it comes to updating the distribution and installing the security updates. I am running a vanilla Linux kernel from kernel.org as the 3.2 kernel has the best hardware support. Linux does not have the problem that I have with Windows 7 & 8 where a machine in suspend mode will suddenly wake up by itself. That is another annoying thing about the Windows operating system, I do not know how to fix that. Linux requires you to press the power button to wake the computer back up from sleep mode, I like that better. Windows is too sensitive. The slightest thing seems to wake it back up. But installing updates does not need the PC to wait for ages during shutdown to install updates. There are some examples here of bad behavior from the Windows update system, where someone had to wait all night for the updates to install. That should not be the case with a modern computer but it is. Microsoft need to find a way to install updates whilst Windows is actually running, just like Linux can, but I am not sure if this is possible.