Oh, so telling the truth is now considered "insulting people"? How very convenient!

I do not care what Micro$oft thinks. I care what I think. If my "small rebellion" does not bother them - good for them. My only gripe is with the people that think we should always do as authorities tells us to do.
We must protect OUR OWN interests, not theirs profits.

As long as you don't know invenio personal, i'm rather sure you barely know anything about him. It's a little bit over the top to accuse him to someones "slave", don't you think. Simply cool you engines.
Truth is something thats backed facts and extensive knowledge. So it's not truth, it's your personal opinion, that you only state to be true. You can think what you want, but don't insult people, that's simply a bad style.

Lack of Win 7 or Linux support will be a deal breaker for me also.

There's no way I'll ever make the switch to Win 10, M$ are treating Win 10 as a service and I'd be willing to bet that once the userbase is large enough they'll try to charge a yearly subscription fee for it.

Once Win7 is no longer a feasible option I'll be making the transition to Linux.

It'll be a pity if I don't get to play Cyberpunk 2077 as I've always enjoyed CDPR's games but it's hardly the end of the world.

Sorry - but it's works ONLY till next patch, then you need to do all again.
And - this will NOT switch off ALL spyware. Win10 build to make you a part of Micro$oft online service - nothing will change it. You CANNOT take back control of Win10 - it's verbotten by corporate fuhrer.

Oh, it's quite possible to remove most of the nasties that MS have stuck into Win10, but there's always going to be that nagging feeling of whether you've actually removed all of the nasties. As mentioned below, updates will also break this and require your system to purged once more.

But that real question is why you should even have to do this in the first place. If you're actively fighting against your own OS every step of the way, something has gone very wrong. Isn't it better to just not use it at all?

For a working pc use Linux. For gaming pc it's not so simple. Games are developed only for the most common operation systems and Linux barely reaches 1% in this segment. Native Linux versions of games are very rare. Mostly you will have use tools to allow you to play the Winows version on Linux and have to live with the disadvantage in performance. The "easiest" way is to simply put the current Windows on you gaming pc(which you strictly use for gaming) and for everything else use Linux. Simple in this case, however, is a very relative concept. If you really ask why you have to fight your own OS, the answer is, because Windows has more than 2/3 market share. As long as this is the case, they don't have any relevant competitor and nearly every single piece of software is develop for windows. The only thing that is close to a competitor is google, which i don't think is any better than microsoft.

Depressing times I''ve been a PC gamer for over 20 yrs but now I think it's time to just walk away. :(

I meant it more in terms of this specific version. If the current version of Windows actively works against your own interests when the previous version did not, then if you need it at all, you should stick with the previous version.

Win10 alone has a market share of 2/3 of the gaming segment (Windows in total ~95%). As long as someone has a monopol on something you see as essential, they can do as they want. That sounds dystopic, but it's how the world works, if you like it or not(i don't but it's only one of many things i dont like).
It's not totally new that you have to fight your own OS. At the beginning you needed a lot of tools to make Win 7 and Win 8 a useable OS. What is new is only the extent of the necessary modifications and that you have to do it again and again.

Bill Gates once said about the mobile os market: As long as you only offer 50% or even 90% of the apps your competitor offers, you have lost. It's a winner takes all market and i thinks it's the same for the pc os market. Most software is develop for Windows, resulting in most people using Windows, resulting in most software being develop for Windows. (if you like replace Windows by Win 10, doesn't matter)

As long as you don't develop a fanatastic OS, that takes over the market or invent a new plattform that replaces the pc, you will have to use the current Windows version if you want to play the newest games.

I also was going to buy Cyberpunk 2077, then saw it's win10 only and that stopped me in my tracks.

I will be using win7 until I can't use it anymore, then switching to linux.

I will never use the spyware crap that is win10!

Cannot they make it part of a rodo? To make this unbridled data collecting by companies outlawed?

In theorie yes. In reality it's overwhelming complicated. To define what informations can be collected and which not is very complex. For example an online shop will have to store you name, address, maybe banking account( or paypal,..). They have to save informations on what you brought and so on. They could also argue that they have to store you IP, Mac and track your position to ensure that your account isn't hacked. Every online store can gather a huge amount of data for "good" reasons. Microsoft simply states it is for security reasons and to make the os more comfortable. It's also no solution to let the user decide what information he will share. I'm rather sure that the Win 10 lizence list all data they collect and says that you either agree with that or are not allowed to use there os(i am sure they would even give you your money back).

It's very complicated to define what information should be stored and when, without causing much more bureaucracy or decrease general usability. Not to mention you would be involved in a decades-long legal battle, during which thousands of company employees try to find a workaround, that allows them to continue as before.

But that would make the Rodo something more then a pointless bother. The W10 license saying "that you either agree with that or are not allowed to use there os" should be made illegal.

That would mean forcing someone to sell you something he owns, under conditions he does agrees. That's more or less the same as to say i want to buy that, but am only paying the half and you are forced to sell it. The data Microsoft collects have an economical value for them and forcing them to sell Windows without getting the data is legally the same as forcing them to sell it on discount. In a free democracy, that's a big legal problem, because it collides with the most constitutions.