Microsoft keeps insisting that it’s deeply committed to the quality of Windows 11

"Reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points" is one of Microsoft's action items.

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[Wheels Of Confusion]

Maybe the should just buy File Pilot and replace File Explorer all together?

https://filepilot.tech/

Almost anything is better than Explorer.

I'm spoiled by Linux, where popular file managers are super featureful and tweakable without being overbearing... or needing a chatbot. The default behaviors are sane and powerful and it's easy to do what I need right out of the box. But just ticking a few buttons in the preferences dialog also makes me more efficient at it! I wasn't even using Norton Commander back then but the dual-pane workflow has been a revelation to me in the last year, and almost all the file managers in *Nixland can do it.
But for me, the original killer feature was middle-click to open a folder in a new window. It's infuriating that MS can't/won't implement something so basic and wonderful.

I've felt that way even before MS turned off updates to Windows 10 and force me to make the jump.
This is one of the reasons why playing with alternative OSes is good learning as well as good fun. You stumble across features and usability bonuses that you didn't even know you were missing.

100%. The problem for Microsoft is that the world's changed. Gabe Newell slipped them one hell of a sucker punch with SteamOS which also led to Proton. All of a sudden, the gamer crowd that supported the Windows consumer market is showing serious stress fractures. And if the gamers that make up family tech support go to Linux, their families aren't too far behind.

It's almost like the leadership at MS shouldn't have assumed they hold an unassailable monopoly on operating systems and that they could dictate how all computers everywhere should work, leaving users powerless and beholden to the latest corporate vision for shareholders.

ReactOS gets almost no attention or mention in these threads.

I haven't checked on them in a while, but am wondering if anyone has tried using it as a desktop replacement, and how far you can go with it.

ReactOS is basically unusable on bare metal configurations in the wild. It's isn't fully compatible with MS hardware drivers. Nor natively MS software, even old stuff. What you can use is mostly limited to the repository full of old vetted shareware or FOSS software that someone compiled to run on a version of ReactOS that might already be outdated and broken. And there's no guarantee the package will be maintained to keep current with upstream, either.

It works best in a VM, and even there it's limited and fragile. That's why there's no 1.0 release.

It's a non-entity as far as real alternatives are concerned.