Software Slowdown
>>> "Modern hardware has passed the point that the end users get significant benefit from the purchase of new computer hardware."
This touches on an issue that goes far beyond Windows 11: the fact that software innovation stopped about two decades ago. The 1990s saw dozens of software publishers vying to field the Next Great Application. That stopped in the early 2000s.
Today, we rely on decades-old applications - or slightly modernized versions thereof. Windows 10 and Windows 11 are perfect examples - neither of them lets users do anything much they couldn't do just as well on Windows 2000. After two decades of 'improvement,' they don't even make the old tasks easier or more efficient. On the contrary, each new version seems to delight in destroying successful workflows.
The software slowdown became embarrassingly obvious with the launch of Windows 10, when Microsoft actually boasted that its new OS would use LESS CPU capacity most of the time. This sounded great, as long as one didn't stop to realize what it really meant - that Microsoft couldn't come up with any way to use more than a few percent of a PC's processing capability. Software evolution had not only fallen behind hardware, the dominant software publisher had stopped trying to catch up and instead declared stagnation to be a virtue.
Microsoft clearly has no intention (or ability) to make further substantial improvement in Windows, or Office. So all future 'upgrades' will happen only at the point of a gun - expiring support, end of security updates, SAAS contracts, etc. Linux has been the logical upgrade from every version of Windows for at least a decade. It at least has the potential to reopen the sluice gates of innovation - IF Microsoft's stranglehold on the market ever allows it to get a proper foothold.