It’s the kind of power that, philosophically, should be available to all PC users out of the box.

That kind of power IS available to all PC users out of the box as they can install a different OS like GNU/Linux or one of the BSDs etc. The problem is that Windows is not very customisable by default, and become less customisable with time without using 3rd party tools. Even very simple things like moving the position of the taskbar present since Win95 are gone.

I have to use Win 11 at work and it is the most frustrating version I’ve used, and that’s going back to Win 3.11 as a kid. The design decisions are infuriating - for example if I right click I get a dumbed down menu and then have to click again to get to more options, revealing the original menu. And there is no option to turn that off (maybe there is a reghack but that isn’t available to me using a work managed PC).

Windows has become more and more restrictive, and locked down, while at the same time havesting my data. I used to like Windows, now I can barely tolerate it.