Microsoft is making Windows into the Nigerian Prince of operating systems. Classically, Nigerian Prince scams are so obvious that they weed out all the people smart enough to avoid being swindled, leaving the easy pickings to be plucked without much effort.
Windows is the same. By Microsoft removing all bypass measures that make it tolerable, their remaining user base will just end up being people who don't care about security and privacy, people who won't complain about being inundated with ads, AI, and bingware, people who have no idea that a modern operating system should be fast, customizable, and open. That 90% customer base is easy to fleece with 10% effort, so why bother with the 10% base that will require 90% effort?
The thing is linux desktop is pretty damn good for a lot of people for their day to day needs. It's just the office tools and gaming. Cloud tools like google docs can handle the office side and valve can sovle gaming. But there still remains the issue of convincing people.
My mom works as a translator and all she needs is email, something to edit documents in and a browser, thats it. She was able adapt to ubuntu pretty fast even though she's not the kind of person who likes learning new tech.
There must be millions of users just like her. But people are very resistant to change and few have an annoying linux evangelist like myself in the house to push them.
We need to get them young somehow. I'm thinking around highschool.
I replaced Windows with Fedora (KDE) on my moms computer, and she's never even commented on it. The browser icon looks the same, and it's in roughly the same place.
Is there a way to chain launch a "qemu VM --> windows 10 client --> autodesk product" in a transparent way? If we could do that reliably and with a stripped down win10 image, I think the serious office users could just pretend they are running autodesk or whatever software in linux. The big downside I presume is this will not work with software that need tight interaction with custom hardware (mocap suits etc).
Yes, doing that by hand would be three lines of bash to launch it.
virsh start ms-malware11 # or any other method to launch your vm
sleep 20
remmina -c /home/me/ms-malware11.remmina
Make a shortcut to above script and the only thing the user needs to do is click it .
It requires a bit of setup on Linux. First install a win11 vm, you can do it graphically via `virtual machine manager` from libvirt. Then install remmina and configure a profile `ms-malware11.remmina`, also graphically. In that profile, under Advanced, have Startup Program "AutoDesk.exe" or whatever that is called.
Then Autodesk runs like any linux application, the user doesn't see it runs in a vm. This feature depends on RemoteApp feature in Windows.
This is something your mom probably wouldn't setup by hand, but anybody here should be able to.
'Winapps' and 'winboat' on Linux allow a windows image to run in a Linux docker container and permit just the app to be streamed to the Linux desktop (after initial setup). I haven't played with it yet..but you could theoretically set up a windows host on a different remote server via tailscale or netbird and have them RDP into the windows docker container remotely.
Unfortunately my parents run macos and these tools are not meant for Macos. But like you said there are apps like UTM that provide a nice shell for QEMU on macos. Not as nice as streaming just the app, but a good start. These work great on new macmini with apple silicon.
My guess is that they are focused only on to cashcow -> enterprise, office, (and all Copilot BS). Sadly very few of IT people I know of move to Linux or macOS for this specific reason. Just like XP users tolerated the tons of systray, toolbar crap - most are tolerating AI shit. To be fair to even knowledgeable people, most are happy to live their live on Smartphone (+ maybe tablet). Most get a corporate laptop from work.
Or gamers that are already used to Windows. So inertia.
Many gamers are married to Windows exclusive games like Fortnite etc., but gamers are also more rebellious than corporate IT staff and many have actually built their computers from parts, so they are not scared of flashing a USB drive. I'm optimistic that this group is the next one to break away from Windows.
Gaming is the biggest thing that keeps me on Windows, followed by the fact that I use an Nvidia GPU, followed by a very localized case of inertia where I have so much data, settings and programs concentrated in my OS install that migrating it all over is going to be a monumental pain in the ass. But luckily, Linux gaming has gotten way better and I don't play the kind of games that categorically refuses to run there (anything with highly involved anti-cheat systems), so once my version of Windows becomes unsupported, I'll bite the bullet and make the Linux install into my primary one.
I think people like me are the real first line that's most likely to switch - techy people who play games (which had so far kept them on Windows) and that suffer firsthand at Microsoft's attempts to get them directly in addition to already being treated horribly by default. This group is less afraid of changing things up and has more incentives to switch. But if we talk of gamers in general, it may take a while until a meaningful number of them switch over, even though they are far more motivated than the average PC user. Even though they're the prime candidates, it's going to be a very, very steep uphill battle.
Right. I said that when Windows loses the gamers, its monopoly will eventually collapse. Office-use is another area where Windows has a stronghold, but the gamers are typically quite clever people, whereas elderly people often have physical problems and grew up in a time where computers weren't so dominating.
> ... localized case of inertia where I have so much data, settings and programs concentrated in my OS install that migrating it all ...
Your first step is start swapping out Windows-specific programs for cross-platform alternatives. Eventually you'll have to just cut the rest loose and make the jump though. Don't bother dual-booting either or you'll just delay it further.
I made the transition a few years ago and it was far less dramatic than I imagined.
> people who have no idea that a modern operating system should be fast, customizable, and open
What a ridiculous idea. Any serious person knows that a modern operating system must, above all, be profitable, profitable and profitable. Caring about people doesn't make you any money, and since you already make up most of the market, it's not like you need to entice anyone over.
A slightly less provocative and crass version of the above, yet one that still conveys the exact same message, is probably what most of the higher-ups of the software world believe. At least the ones that call the shots seem to.
I doubt the various shitty parts of Windows (not the forced AI/whatever) is due to malice, unless you mean employees maliciously trying to destroy the company.
I would say the malice is from management, investors, and product leads. Developers just do what they are told. Microsoft is choosing enshitification versus quality. CEO needs to pump that stock and having enterprise locked into without alternatives helps them.
I grew up with Microsoft and now you have to pay me to use their products. I would never choose their OS for product hosting. Even their embedded / IoT is trying to force a Microsoft account and push against local user.
I get the impression that a lot of the old guard are long gone from the Windows team or have no influence. Raymond Chen is still around but not sure how much he actually works on Windows day to day.
Microsoft was founded in 1975. 1981 was the first DOS release. 1985 was the first release of Windows. 40 years working on windows is a long time, I would be surprised if anyone for the original team is left at this point. Even someone joining out of college in 2000 is now 25 years in, is 57, and could feasibly be retiring....
True. I meant to say that it feels like the people who know what's going on have long departed and it's junior web developers left to pick up the pieces.
Off by 10+1. Someone who graduated college in 2000 = 25 + 22 (4 years of college from 18) = 47, not 57, and not anywhere close to the retirement age. It might be pedantry, but the original comment should have said 1990, not 2000.
This is true with a lot of companies. If you made people actually use their own product (do they?!) maybe they'd think twice before doing boneheaded things
Then again, I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem
If you made people actually use their own product (do they?!)
Yes, they do. Unfortunately even MS employees are powerless to do anything about the crap that gets shoved into Windows by other employees working at the company, and the ones who complain about it are quietly shown the door or have already left of their own will, leaving only those who are completely apathetic or...
Then again, I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem
Exactly. That and the desire to remain in the country --- part of the reason why companies like H-1Bs so much is because they are going to be far more docile and less willing to resist doing things they feel are wrong.
I remember I was at a Python conference some years ago and every Microsoft dev I saw had a MacBook. So no, I don’t think they use their own product internally.
As an aside, I used to know a number of MS heads who ran Windows on Mac Intel machines because they preferred the hardware (~2014 MBP) and/or because they ostensibly worked at Mac shops and were handed one upon entry.
Long ago at this point when my job required windows, the best experience for me was running it in a VM on a MBP. Actually worked quite well since it was easy stop/start windows and segmented work off on its own.
With the way the economy is going (some call it K-shaped) it's more profitable to squeeze as hard as you can and extract as much as possible out of whales versus trying to have mass market appeal. Azure, Office and Copilot will sustain them.
Nvidia is doing something similar where they're just extracting as much as possible out of AI companies and not caring one bit about consumers.
The term cloud feudalism is not new, but now I'm thinking it feels like humanity is being dragged to the feudal ages because more and more everything happens online now. You want to work? Be a peasant for Uber Eats, they have all the power and you have none, they set the rules as they please and all you can do is grin and bear it, or try move from one feudal domain to another (i.e. work for a different delivery app).
>With the way the economy is going (some call it K-shaped) it's more profitable to squeeze as hard as you can and extract as much as possible out of whales versus trying to have mass market appeal
How does whatever microsoft is doing to windows line up with that?
Hmm, it does line up with that from my perspective too.
It's just a different way to say "you're the product, not the customer" if you look at the statement from a neutral perspective - the whale being the actual customer, who changes all the time depending on what Microsoft MBAs think might have the highest potential value they can extract.
>the whale being the actual customer, who changes all the time depending on what Microsoft MBAs think might have the highest potential value they can extract.
Who's the "whale" in this context? Windows users who subscribe to copilot? Enterprise? Advertisers?
Enterprises are the whales. Microsoft sells user management, Office, Copilot, Outlook, etc... all bundled together for more per seat per year than a consumer will spend or generate in the whole lifecycle of their device. Nevermind Azure.
So consumers are mostly ignored, except as a testbed to shove AI and ads.
And based on historical trends, they are doing the clever thing. If there are enterprises today still running IBM mainframes, MS is probably right to expect that today's enterprise contracts will be paying off at least 40 years down the line -- especially when you factor in the motte of regulatory traps and labyrinthine compliance checks.
I'm not so sure about that. If Microsoft actually removed all the cruft, then they would need around 5% of the employees currently working on it. They'd all be unemployed.
Windows is now less than 10% of their revenue, last I saw. I think Windows is more valuable to keep people in the Microsoft ecosystem, than as a source of direct revenue.
Honestly Windows 7 was the best OS they ever built. It just went downwards from there, and they abandoned it essentially.
I don't understand what's going on at Microsoft, but they leave huge stacks of money on the table. LTSC versions weren't "popular", they were the least worst option for a lot of industries. And now they kinda completely ignored all customer feedback.
Microsoft managed to make every other release of Windows good.
95 good, NT 4 bad, 98 good, 98 SE bad, 2000 good, Me bad, XP good, Vista bad, 7 good...
The plan with Windows 10 was to light their desktop market share on fire in the hopes they could see iPads in the distance and try to chase them. Windows 11 was codenamed "give your toxic ex a second chance."
It could be a nice OS, if Microsoft didn’t go out of their way to make it awful.
I run Active Directory at home, for various reasons. I’ve got Group Policy in a good enough shape now that I’m not terribly troubled by Microsoft’s enshittification but it took substantial effort to get there, and it requires some work to maintain.
When did any manager get promoted for keeping software stable?
Just look at google and their chat softwares... you either make something new, or someone else does and you're left behind... be it ads in their start menu, spyware "AI", or paid solitaire.
That pays for itself in 20 years and most of those customers won't have better choices in the next 50. The core of that infrastructure will probably oitlive most people on the team. Sounds like a good long term stable business.
It’s not about giving you a clean experience, it’s about setting you up as a constant cash cow hooked into and paying for all their services.
I hate adobes current business model and for that matter fusion360 as well. It’s all internet required bullshit but it’s making them tons of money and there are no viable alternatives.
I put up with so much Windows crap over the years, and Windows 11 was the final straw. It’s not even the gaming OS anymore as Linux feels snappier and more stable for running games.
After using Linux just about everywhere else, I moved my main desktop/gaming rig to Linux about a year ago. (The last Windows install I have is my retro PC.)
I work in e-waste recycling, and it's my first Windows-free job. A family friend called me for advice on her old decrepit laptop. I told her about my work "laptop": a Surface Pro tablet with Linux. I just sold one to her, partially on the security and privacy advantages of Linux.
I have been running Deb 13 on my primary workstation for a couple months, just as stable as Debian 12 I was running for years on my primary. I am able to do all of my programming work, virtual win/mac for compiling and able to play every Steam game I try with zero problems (BG3, CyberPunk, etc), all from a $500 mini-pc. Even bluetooth has had zero issue (which is usually a problem/pita)
My work laptop used to be Thinkpad P1 before they enfored Dell hardware. The current win11 laptop needs to be replaced for stability issues, and I begrudgingly going to ask for a MacBook.
Recent attacks on Ubisoft and Rainbow Six Siege have brought some interesting concern about the wisdom of having basically a kernel backdoor to the whole system installed and ready to be accessed in case of a company breach (not that this particular attack could allow that, but future scenarios might very well convert the user base into a botnet)
Not sure how much gamers with a modicum of awareness (already a minority) will care, but the risk is there. We could paraphrase that famous line to say that "The 'S' in 'Kernel anticheat' stands for Security".
I think “king” may be overstating it somewhat. While it’s true that there are some big titles with anticheat that won’t work on Linux, there are quite a few major titles that work fine, and in practice I’ve been able to use Linux as a gaming system for awhile now without issue. I primarily play Overwatch, The Finals, ARC Raiders, Rocket League and Age of Empires.
I think the success of the Steam Deck has really helped the situation, and the titles that are broken because of anticheat are not important enough to me to keep a Windows system around.
Linux has working EAC. Any software not working on Linux is a Policy decision by the seller, not lacking features on the buyer.
Oh and rootkit level EAC? Expect that to go away on Windows too when MS finally gets sick of Crowdstrike and that ilk causing self inflicted Denial of Service attacks on whole economic sectors.
The anticheat needs to be server-side to be credible, i.e. the game should be designed to only provide the information that client needs for fair play. I know this isn't easy, but it should be the goal.
Client still needs to know coordinates of opponents and other objects that could be in their view within the next 200ms, and once the client knows those, a cheating client can reveal opponent positions. You can't enforce that server side without adding huge mandatory lag to all clients.
~~No, with a correct implementation, the server will only send positions of clients actually visible (taking occlusion and view frustum into account). It's complex, but so are modern engines. It's totally doable.~~
EDIT: sorry, I completely misread your comment. You're right about the latency issue, but that's also an issue with client-side prediction implementations, which provide a small window in which all client packets are trusted, rather than just the latest ones (eg to be able to rewind when computing collision detection in a fast paced shooter)
The real challenge to solve is botting, which includes things like aimbots, macros the negate recoil, etc. It's basically impossible to solve this, regardless of operating system or hardware (eg external cheat peripherals)
I see it as a moderation issue, which is unavoidable. Just focus on building tools to help users report cheaters rather than try to automate the whole thing via flawed anticheat spyware, and missing out on potentially the next big PC gaming platform in the process.
> aimbots, macros the negate recoil, etc. It's basically impossible to solve this
It's not. But it is much more expensive on the server-side, i.e. paid by the company, so the real solution of mainframe + thin clients is not one that companies want to implement. Instead, they rely on computing on the client model, which is what opens up the door to cheats.
E.g. Aimbots and Recoil suppressors are non existent if it's the server calculating trajectories and telling the clients "your bullet hit exactly here (X, Y, Z), go draw an impact texture in there". But as said, that means a lot of computing done on the server. Not cheap, but given the $millions invested so far in anticheat tech over the years, one has to wonder if it wouldn't really be cheaper, after all...
But you can detect serverside (at least probabilistically) if a user is abusing it to their advantage.
Some Valve guy gave a great talk about their cheating detection a while back; I found it incredibly impressive: https://youtu.be/ObhK8lUfIlc (can't comment on their effectiveness these days, haven't played CS in a long time)
This is begging the question. Games on linux lack kernel anticheat because linux isn't very popular. Once linux is popular enough, then they will figure out a way to do anti cheat on it in a way that they consider acceptable. Valve already considers VAC good enough, because they want to support linux. Anti cheat on windows works the way it does because that's what's available on windows, on linux they'll figure out some other way.
Personally I have been playing it on Arch Linux since release and it has always worked just fine, besides it being a deeply janky game regardless of OS.
This is not good to hear, at my work we have the production technicians activate the occasional Windows 7 PC via the phone. We do it this way as these are specialized embedded PC’s that won’t connect to the internet. Flippant comments to “just use Linux” are not understanding the realities of keeping 20yr old software in the medical, offshore drilling, etc industries.
"Just use Windows" seems to be more problematic than "just use Linux" here. Though there is hope that WINE will reach enough feature parity for many applications, accessing external hardware is the hardest thing to emulate.
Building products on top of Windows seems to limit the lifetime of the product to whatever support Microsoft seem to be willing to provide.
The best time to migrate off Windows was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
AFAIK Windows 11 IoT, which is intended for exactly these kinds of environments, can be activated via phone and LAN without internet.
Microsoft isn't abandoning these markets. They've been min-maxing consumer software enshittification for years now and doing an extremely good job, but they still have good options for enterprise.
> Flippant comments to “just use Linux” are not understanding the realities of keeping 20yr old software in the medical, offshore drilling, etc industries.
I make such comments. Tell me: what exactly is problematic about medical, offshore drilling, etc industries which makes it difficult or impossible to switch?
... wanna hire me to work on that? I am convinced that, whatever the cost is, it will be cheaper than using software on a very-outdated very-proprietary operating system for another couple of decades.
To name a few (presumably): drivers, proprietary protocols, vendor warranties/support, licensing/relicensing, paying you to do the work, waiting for the work to be done/tested, paying for workforce re-training, justifying this to management etc.
All these reasons suck, but they’re all reality in one industry or another sadly.
Linux kernel is open source and really easy to read, and also fairly easy to write drivers for.
> proprietary protocols
I've written many network softwares, and proprietary protocols aren't difficult to me.
> vendor warranties/support
Fuck vendor lock-in. Move to Linux.
> licensing/relicensing
Fuck vendors.
> paying you to do the work
...is cheaper than paying vendors.
> waiting for the work to be done/tested
Here, let me demonstrate that it works... with many many many automated tests.
> * paying for workforce re-training*
Not really important if it's well-done.
> justifying this to management
A lot of business management can't see past their own nose until it comes to money. Do some maths and show them the cost savings in a presentation. They'll listen.
These things are not as trivial as you think they are when that computer is connected to industrial equipment that costs millions of dollars, you have no test environment, the original vendor no longer exists, and any failure or downtime at best will cause millions in financial losses, and at worst will maim or kill people.
The best option in these cases is to isolate the system from external networks to keep it secured and keep operating until the organization can afford a major capital expenditure to replace everything.
I work in automotive for OEMs and I've seen this at many factories. They still need to switch, because their technical issues are a supply chain risk for me. I don't want to hear that a batch is bad because they did abominable things to the software they were given. That's happened. I don't want to find out that they had a system die or get hacked and now things are shut down until some eBay seller mails replacements. Seen that. So on and so forth.
I ran out of patience years ago for the inevitable results of letting an unaccountable third party own decision-making on your critical systems. I'd much rather have that argument when the CEOs aren't breathing down our necks.
My experience on this topic is mostly with regulated industries like healthcare and critical infrastructure. It was probably less of a headache because the only solution was to properly maintain what you had or buy something new. Nobody was fucking around with the software or they would have gone to prison.
You clearly dont understand that you dont get to make those decisions. Your users need software X to do Y as a business requirement. Are you going to tell them fuck off because you dont support windows? Sure, you could, once.
And no manager would ever okay someone writing a fuckton of driver shit or reverse engineering some protocols just so you can be high king and not use a specific OS.
Fact is business needs drive whats used, and you do not get a say in it, you might think you do, but you really dont. You can give information and options but ultimately it wont be your decision and youll support what the business needs you to support, or you wont be with the business anymore.
Yeah i agree vendors suck and so do license related shit, but you arent going to convince management that you could write a superior product AND support it for less than the cost the vendor would charge the company. And yes, this isnt always true, there are obviously some times when it is actually better to do it yourself, or use a foss solution. You still wont win in most cases. Users are going to use the thing they need and if youre blocking them from moving forward, youre more problem than the software youre trying to stop deployment of.
I should have a valid license for windows, my Win 8 Pro license (which I paid full price for, like $150) should have worked for Windows 10 (and then transfered to 11) but it's not working anymore for whatever reason, I probably upgraded without disabling the key somewhere or whatever. So when I use Windows I have that "activation required" nag watermark now. When microsoft finally remotely kills my unactivated windows 10 install (a week from now? 6 months?) I'm just not going back. The only reason I dual boot these days is fusion 360 CAD and there's a steam install on there so it's probably showing up as a windows install even though I haven't played games on there in probably years.
Windows will probably continue on forever simply due to inertia but this "you have to have a web login to use your private computer" b.s. is going to turn off a lot of consumers, and this will be the watershed moment where Proton/Wine finally moves from 5, to 10 or 15% of users
We should unite and start pushing back, against MS and this general anti-consumer push towards forcing a subscription model on everything, I will never rent a computer, never pay such a subscription, go fuck yourselves corporate goons ans stakeholders.
Keep milking the cash cows to pay for the new growth area (AI). Convert maximum % of Windows users into subscription service consumers (e.g. cloud storage, Office 365, future paid AI capabilities.)
Also, they haven't cared about Windows 11 consumer sales for decades. It's not a coincidence that it's easier to crack Windows 11 than it was to crack Windows XP.
I'm not sure anyone at Microsoft has any endgame in mind for Windows. The devs are just working on what they're being told to work on, which aren't the parts conducive to happy consumers, while the execs are working on instinct and telemetry without context, and thus are basically flailing with no actual goal in mind beyond the next quarter. Add in that there's little hope for Windows' market share to increase in any large way, and that there thus isn't much reason to spend loads of money or dev time on improving Windows, and there's no wonder that we've come to this point.
I boot to Linux, but have a Windows 11 VM. I haven't spun up the Windows VM more than once a month for many months (maybe a year?). And that's just to update windows.
Replace personal PCs with thin clients that give you an RDP session to Azure? I'm pretty sure a cloud only / subscription based "agentic" OS is the goal for windows. And, conveniently, hardware prices are through the roof until (hopefully) the AI bubble pops.
This - they already renamed remote desktop to Windows App on my work Mac so the next step is just offering "secure computing environmens" for their corporate customers.
Microsoft's cloud/AI services are high-margin and lock users into a subscription, i.e. a consistent revenue stream.
Windows is to be a marketing/cross-selling channel for those businesses first and foremost.
They very likely foresee the demise of PC as a platform altogether and are trying their best to shepherd us into their other products.
The endgame is obviously to sell you Office 365, and Xbox Game Pass. Every Windows user who isn't giving them ARR equals one skeptical eyebrow from wall street.
They’re using their legacy OS and Office business to subsidize services (LinkedIn, GitHub, npm, vscode, teams, azure, etc).
Consider what our industry will look like once the surveillance as a service/enshittifcation that’s been implemented for windows is ported to those things.
Try switching away from the services I mentioned, and you’ll see why the strategy makes sense.
I believe once( this is an urban legend) a manufacturer in a middle income country considered going with Linux to save money and Microsoft flew out a sales rep next day to put a stop to it.
Microsoft likes it when you get a "deal" and buy a pro key for 10$. Whatever, you'll subscribe to half a dozen Microwave services ideally paying them 30$ to 40$ a month forever.
The last thing they want is you to try Linux.
However, I had the joy of watching multiple Linux desktop environments crash when I switched to my Bluetooth headphones.
Cinnamon and Budgie both crashed. No one knows why. I had to switch to Mate and then spend another 20 minutes trying to get it look ok.
No typical user wants to deal with this. They'd assume Linux doesn't work and move on.
Some mornings when I wake my laptop from sleep, my USB webcam doesn't work. No matter how many times I plug and unplug, no dice. Sometimes the wifi just refuses to connect to my network. Only a full reboot fixes things.
Sometimes, while I do things on a browser, I get a BSOD, no warning.
Some mornings, usually when I left important work open and half finished the night before, my computer decides to do an update and all my open windows, tabs, reference documents etc are gone, as if someone came and cleared my workbench mid project and now I need to set up all my shit again from scratch.
My personal laptop is a 10 year old POS thinkpad T-something with Linux Mint. Biggest issue is I forget to properly shut it down, and to plug it in every now and then, and the shot battery runs down. Admittedly, the bluetooth is sometimes a little iffy, but I've spent 0 effort trying to resolve it. I just open the lid, and my computer is ready for me. Boots up in an instant and always in the state I left it in (unless I let the battery run down).
My new, modern, high spec, high ram, high-res laptop is easily an order of magnitude more frustrating to use than my linux shitbox laptop.
I quit my job, and bought the laptop from the company. It's getting a wipe this weekend and some flavour of linux, and the wife is getting it as a belated christmas gift. She's due an upgrade, and I decided she's ready to move to linux now.
I'm using Fedora with KDE Plasma, and at this point I can assure you that I run into more annoyances with Windows than Fedora
Linux has the reputation of being buggy and hard to fix, so some people don't put any effort in finding the solution, but windows has its fair share of issues too.
It's not like Windows hasn't had a slew of bullshit like this over the years. Especially around audio and peripherals. It still changes my default headphones every time I log in, doesn't recognise my standard audio interface, it's a crapshoot if my USB devices are all recognised every boot.
>I believe once( this is an urban legend) a manufacturer in a middle income country considered going with Linux to save money and Microsoft flew out a sales rep next day to put a stop to it.
non urban legend: Munich migrated whole city (15K computers) to Linux saving millions. Microsoft moved their German HQ to Munich to win back the contract, and year later city announced removing linux and going back to windows.
Hm, when I set up the pre-installed Windows 11 on my mother's new laptop, I was able to set it up without any Microsoft account at all (she never had one and doesn't want one). I remember that it was possible by running some command at one point during the setup process. Is that also gone by now?
As someone who hasn't used Windows in a long time, could you explain the benefit of doing a double install like that? I.e., if you stopped at step #1, it's activated, so what purpose does step 2 serve?
The problem isn't just that new installs will require this, but if you are on Windows 11, there are a hundred accidental ways to create a Microsoft account. Sometimes it's disguised as an update, or a sneaky notification. Sometimes it's onedrive, or you are trying to login via Edge. It reminds me of how Google was trying to trick us all into getting a Google+ account.
MS: "One way or another, you are creating an account so help me God."
My problem is that Windows fucks up my user name when I log in to my account when setting up a new machine. I drives me up the wall.
My name is Daniel. My name on my MS account is Daniel. When I log in to a new Windows machine, the fucking thing decides my user name, and therefore my user folder, is "Danie". This is NOT my name, it's a different name that is not mine and it makes my computer grating to use every time.
For some retarded reason, windows does not allow online account users to have a username longer than 5 chars, so it goes and truncates whatever the first name it gets back from the mothership when logging in. A local account does not have this issue.
I wonder how PC gaming is going to look in few years with Nvidia slashing GPU supply, RAM manufacturing going down the ai drain and Windows becomming even less attractive than it used to be.
Maybe next AAA stuff will start to target ARM and natively ARM OSes?
I never thought it would happen, but now I use Linux about 95% of the time. These days, I rarely touch Windows. It feels like Microsoft’s higher-ups never found a clear direction for the OS, focusing more on saturating the market than on maintaining quality. :(
I think Windows has improved as a basic OS tremendously in the past decade, with things like WSL, winget, terminal, storage spaces, fancyzones and such.
The components of perhaps the best general purpose OS available right now are there, but they are buried behind a crappy car-salesman tabloid-press upsell circus that is frankly unbearable to some users.
What I don't get is why MS refuses to let you pay to avoid the circus - It's like a streaming service that only has the ad-financed tier!
I get that the people who care are a minority, but charging that minority a high purchase price for a just-the-os version of windows seems like easy money and would let them dodge all the badwill by presenting a choice.
Right now the official option is simply "suffer the circus or leave". It should at least be amended with "or pay".
we should all come together and collectively kill the idea of using a windows based operating system unless they get their stuff together and give us an AI free, bloat free, single page with 10000 settings configurable for privacy and security and a promise of updating only once a month with full opt out
i recently upgraded a computer. windows 10 deactivated itself due to the hardware change. i tried everything i could to reactivate. microsoft support told me my only solution was to buy a new license. microsoft treats its customer with contempt.
If you can deupgrade... Deupgrade, make sure it reactivates, then create a local account tied to a microsoft account and reboot and check activation page until it says activated with your microsoft account.
Then upgrade and reboot until it deactivates, then it should let you fix it with your microsoft account... Once that happens, you can remove the microsoft account from your computer.
At that point, find a reseller site and buy a key for cheap or just don't activate Windows at all. I don't think you lose much "features" when leaving it unactivated. It's not worth your time to deal with Microsoft support over Windows activation keys in 2026.
OEM licenses are for the computer, not the motherboard. The online activation historically hasn't worked if you change motherboard, but the phone line folks would always activate it for you if you explained that it was the same computer with a different motherboard.
i bought a builder license from newegg in 2017. unfortunately i was not diligent about saving the product key. this was actually the third time i had been in this scenario after changing hardware. no idea why it wouldn’t work this time around.
Windows activation has been a game of CTF for me since the early 2000s. I've got more than enough resources to pay for a Win11 license many times over. But I refuse to. Part is something approximating "I've already paid the windows tax 30+ times" but it's more than this. The UX regression from the XP era is shocking when you put things side by side.
I happily paid $500 for a perpetual VS2026 license just a few days ago, but I'll continue to use things like massgrave for windows no matter how big my cash pile grows. I know it's the same company, but it's really not about the money. It's about sending some kind of a message regarding software quality.
If you could give me an experience identical to VS on Linux I would move in an instant. But it simply doesn't exist. It's frankly not even close after all these years. VSCode is like the IDE "we have at home". Linux is a great target for many things now (e.g., steam deck), but using it as my daily driver development platform is still a non-starter.
I know it's possible to make anything work on Linux, but that's not a very compelling argument for me anymore. It's got to work well. The experience can't suck ass. Even the steam deck was a herky jerky OOBE with WiFi/networking woes and 5-6 reboots to get it going. That's with Gabe Newell ~in charge using billions of dollars to make it go smoothly. I don't have access to those kinds of resources so I figure why even try. I've already thrown ~5k hours into the Linux hole over my lifetime. I don't think it's an investment that has paid off very well for me. Linus himself has acknowledged that the win32 ABI is the most stable and well designed he's ever seen. Why wouldn't I follow his advice?
I used to work at Microsoft in the Windows team (XP/2003/Longhorn/Vista/7).
The product today doesn’t feel like the product I worked on; I feel no connection to it, and every time I think that there’s nothing they could do to make me dislike it any more, Microsoft has another “hey, hold my beer and watch this” moment.
The problem with the old Microsoft this that it was run by engineers who didn’t understand user experience. The problem now is that it’s run by MBAs who dont care about users, just licenses.
I've been running openSUSE tumbleweed myself for years, and recommend Linux to like-minded power users. OP is preaching to the choir.
How do you all deal with (extended) family? This Christmas I spent time with my parents and the topic of Windows 11 came up again with all of its associated dark patterns.
What do you all do to help them out of this madness? Is Ubuntu/Fedora/etc the best option for seniors? My dad's entire career was in Silicon Valley 1.0 where Excel/Outlook was his bread and butter and feels married to Windows, but ever since leaving the workforce those skills are more of a hindrance than an asset.
Now that he's retired, he still uses Excel to plan vacations for example, but Windows is riddled with this BS and I am powerless to help him navigate this anti-consumer behavior. It's incredible that Microsoft is shooting their most loyal customers in the foot with this BS.
Do you all help your parents remotely? What kind of issues do you run into being your parents IT support?
i think a senior thats coming from windows would probably be better off trying zorinOS. even something as minor as the taskbar being in the "wrong" place on ubuntu could be enough to turn a lot of people off
Senior care and technology is going to be a gold rush over the next couple decades. Society is not prepared for the only generation who grew up on the internet to regress into mental infirmary while still believing technology is an essential need.
For those of you who haven't already had to deal with today's 70 year old MCI sufferers and technology, it is already a complete shitshow, and that generation lived half their adult lives without mobile technology.
Imagine finding 12 renewing subscriptions to malwarebytes and other security suites. Or having to burn credit cards every month because they can no longer tell the difference between ads/scams and actual needs. Microsoft, of course, helpfully shovels those scams straight to them via the operating system now. The corporations of America have figured out that milking our elders is good for a quick buck, and it is in their interests to make sure no safety nets are in place. Once they are required, they'll game whatever that system is too.
It is all the control battles our parents fought with their parents over driving, but now it is about the phone/tablet/computer, but not being able to take the phone away as a practical matter because the (first) world expects everyone to have them.
SSO and recovery keys are a problem for proxy account administrators - especially with the banking and medical sectors which still rely solely on SMS. Sites such as login.gov won't allow multiple accounts to have the same phone number. So if both you and your parents need accounts for social security, you as the caregiver can't use your phone as the second factor for their account.
For added fun, many organizations, including banks and the US Government/various federal pension boards, refuse to recognize a power of attorney letter, either. The entire modern situation leaves caregiver children having to commit technical TOS violation/fraud/perjury just to get accounts reset or to (re)gain access to submit address changes.
> For added fun, many organizations, including banks and the US Government/various federal pension boards, refuse to recognize a power of attorney letter, either.
Ouch! That's got to make things hard!
That's thankfully not a problem where I live. Here the problem is more that the banks might be a little over-eager to take agency away from seniors, since once they get a whiff of their grandson helping them with their banking and what not, they lock their account and claim to have broken their TOS or the law regarding not having other people control their account, and that if you want people to do that, you need that power of attorney.
Honestly, this is a lot better than the alternative of not being vigilant enough, and I'd honestly argue that it's better to let there be as little shame as possible in handing over your banking to your next of kind, so that when it starts getting really bad, it's not too late. But this obviously gets very individual very quickly. One senior will handle their banking just fine until their 105, while the next gets Alzheimer at 55, while the next starts to have to put a lot more effort into doing it right at 75, but they don't have any next of kin they can trust to not slowly empty their savings account once they get the power of attorney.
Thanks for bringing up the point about power-of-attorney, I'll have to dive into that as well.
I dread the day I have to get more involved in their healthcare from afar, precisely because of the technology gap. The money grab from big-pharma is going to unrelenting
As much as Windows is deeply flawed, the user interface challenges with Linux are difficult to overcome. Until there is a version of Linux where you don’t have to open the console, Windows will keep its market.
My old man has been running Linux for nearly 20 years now. I PROMISE not only that he has never once opened a console, but would spontaneously combust if you suggested it. (I have used a command line on his computer a few times in those two-ish decades, when doing my very rare tech support, but that's just because that's the fastest way for me to get anything done.)
Maybe Windows back in e.g. Windows 2000 days would have some sort of claim to user interface discoverability and predictability which no Linux distribution would have. That ship has sailed; Windows today is a shitshow.
> Until there is a version of Linux where you don’t have to open the console
This is already the case from the Grandma use case, i.e. nothing more than a web browser and maybe Thunderbird and an office program. The terminal issue doesn't come up until you start getting into people who know just enough to be dangerous (myself included).
The larger issue is that computers with Linux pre-installed are (within a rounding error) not a thing, and thus Grandma can't go out and buy one. Telling her to install it on her current computer makes about as much sense to her as asking her to flob the nerfwhizzle. And even if she could, would she place her bets on a (to her) completely new computer system? Not without help or solid recommendations from trusted sources.
> How do you all deal with (extended) family? This Christmas I spent time with my parents and the topic of Windows 11 came up again with all of its associated dark patterns.
The mom and dad gen are all on iPads or just phones from what I can tell. Very few people there use PCs for their personal computing (work is another matter, but mostly not relevant to this discussion), and those that do are more power user-y. This group largely don't need help beyond edge cases in my experience.
The grandma and grandpa generation are mostly the same story, but there's a lot more who have more or less just bailed completely outside of the absolute essentials (online banking, literal phone calls). Some are still on PCs out of a desire to not change things too much, but I'd imagine switching them over to an iPad is probably an overall improvement once you can get past the unwillingness to shift over to another system. The fact that Windows 11 is such hot garbage will hopefully aid in convincing people of that.
For those who still want a PC, there's Linux. My grandma is on Mint, but that's just because I'm her personal tech support. If I weren't around, she'd have bought a Windows 11 machine from whatever idiot at the local electronics store. I can't imagine that would have gone very well. She'd have probably bailed completely on computing if it came to that.
Very few people in this group of people need software beyond what basic Linux can provide, so Linux should be able to provide a better environment than Windows, but that are loads of potential edge cases, but they're all very small, but all very annoying if you find yourself in one.
> What kind of issues do you run into being your parents IT support?
Mom and Dad: 'Hey, can you help me with this website?' -> 'It's broken, try again tomorrow.' or 'Try that button there.'.
Grandma: See previous.
'How do I do [thing that hasn't changed since Windows 95]'?
'What do I do here?' -> 'Read the message on the screen and act accordingly.'
'My mouse doesn't work!' -> 'Check the batteries.'
Most of these later issues are because she treats the computer mechanistically, one unchanging step at a time, so if anything doesn't go to plan, she functionally panics. I don't know how to solve this problem, but it seems endemic to me given how common of a trope it is in stories from computer savvy people helping the not-so-savvy.
I can't remember where I heard about it, but it probably comes from the fact that a large-ish portion of the population can't connect concepts to things that don't have tangible forms. Thus, all the invisible processes inside any computer (files, memory, networking) that any computer savvy person will be aware of, don't exist and don't make sense in the mind of the not computer savvy, since it has no tangible form. You can find a similar case with office phone systems. Transferring a call is apparently hard for a number of people, since a call isn't a tangible item, doing anything with it makes zero sense. At best you can get them to place calls on hold, but that's only because their office phone will have buttons with blinking lights that say 'Line 1' and 'Line 2' on them, and they can thus easily connect the light blinking with the call on hold. Suddenly it's tangible, and thus it can make sense.
We all largely interact with the same or similar services every day, so it's no wonder we all end up with similar experiences.
Thankfully, I don't have to deal with this every couple of days. Dad rarely ventures outside of his comfort zone, so needing to help him with some website is a very rare occurrence. Grandma is mostly fine so long as absolutely nothing changes. While they don't change every day, they do change every so often, in ways that I have to really focus to even see sometimes, but which apparently instantly throw her of her trail (while at the same time she's incapable of reading an error message that takes up a fairly large portion of her screen! I'm baffled to this day, but there's nothing that can be done about it). If her online bank and the few other services she rarely interacts with never change in even the slightest way for the next 20 years, I'd imagine I'd never need to be her tech support again, barring the batteries in her mouse dying again, or her computer itself kicking the bucket.
I have a windows laptop (and a mac) for work. The windows laptop gets turned on, connected to my limited guest network, only when work yells at me that it hasn't had its security patches recently and in the extremely rare times I need it to do a full build (I'm trying to get our build process away from windows specific. I got the parts I work on away at least). I used MS DOS v2.0. I knew every setting inside and out and had all the tricks down through windows XP. I grudgingly used it up until 5 years ago when I couldn't take MS destroying the OS and user experience any more. Since I switched I have never looked back. Not once have I thought 'Gee, I wish I had a windows box'. Even for gaming. Especially for 'productivity' apps like word and the like. MS used to be THE OS for developers. You built apps for windows because the best tools to build apps were there and the best experience developing was there. Now I have no idea who they are building an OS for other than corporations. It is painful. It is bloated. It is invasive. It isn't intuitive. It can't be trusted. Every time I see windows I cringe and am thankful there are actual alternatives. Good luck MS. You are only being used by people that have to or don't understand they have another option. Lock-in is their only advantage.
Windows 11 is a thin client for the Microsoft cloud. It's not surprising that you have to activate it online, and that you can no longer use it without a Microsoft account. That's the whole point.
People who complain that Windows isn't what they want are missing the point. Windows isn't for you. macOS, Linux, and more obscure choices still exist for general purpose computing. SteamOS or various Steam focused Linux distros exist for gaming. ChromeOS exists as a less offensive and more reliable thin OS.
Trying to force Windows into being something it isn't is a waste of your time.
Always reminds me of the quote "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." by T. J. Watson Sr.
The quote is usually delivered as a punchline of sorts, but we're rapidly approaching a world where there truly will be only five computers. If you define a computer as a system capable of truly general purpose computing, and if you count the computers as systems each capable of operating truly independently of the others. The term "general purpose" needs the further qualification, that a great deal of power and political capital will be needed to have any say in what purpose one of these five computers will be put to, and it will then be forced on the other people who are forced to work with that computer.
i do feel the ecosystem isn't broad enough for linux to become consumer facing. E.g., if you buy a random chinese made writing tablet and tried using it on linux, it has less than even chance of working straight out the box.
Similarly with bluetooth, wifi (for laptops), etc.
The problem is that OEM are locked into windows, so you have the chicken/egg problem where OEM won't want to spend effort on linux compatibility without a large customer base, and customer base won't grow unless they know for sure it is always going to work for _any_ piece of hardware they might purchase.
May be steam machine and valve could be the push it needs to establish a large customer base.
Does your mother know how to install a device driver on Windows? None of the non-technical people I know can't fix anything on their computers.
I've been doing experiments over the last 10 or so years, I've been borrowing my Linux laptops to people, and to my surprise, they had absolutely no problem using it. Especially children, you just start using GNOME as if it's nothing. They are already used to different phones, different kinds of computers, it really makes no difference to them. Your mother is probably checking gmail, watching youtube, and maybe writing google docs, not much else.
This is just so bizarre. Like 90% of the people wouldn't even know you COULD activate without an MS account and the remainder will just use Rufus to bypass restrictions. So what is MS actually "fixing"?
My version of that is to just use a (high-end) Chromebook. The OS never gets in the way, can’t remember the last time I had to change a system setting or manually upgrade anything
Nothing wrong with Windows Server Core, which has zero UI. Managed totally with Powershell, which once you get used to it, is an excellent shell/scripting language.
Upgrading to Windows 11 tomorrow for my new gaming pc. Really looking forward to it. Mostly so I can use the new Phone Link functionality to get my iMessages on my desktop.
Do yourself a favor and stick to Windows 10. ISOs are still available on Microsoft's website and you can use local accounts and activate ESU using any of the scripts available on GitHub.
Windows is the same. By Microsoft removing all bypass measures that make it tolerable, their remaining user base will just end up being people who don't care about security and privacy, people who won't complain about being inundated with ads, AI, and bingware, people who have no idea that a modern operating system should be fast, customizable, and open. That 90% customer base is easy to fleece with 10% effort, so why bother with the 10% base that will require 90% effort?
My mom works as a translator and all she needs is email, something to edit documents in and a browser, thats it. She was able adapt to ubuntu pretty fast even though she's not the kind of person who likes learning new tech.
There must be millions of users just like her. But people are very resistant to change and few have an annoying linux evangelist like myself in the house to push them.
We need to get them young somehow. I'm thinking around highschool.
It requires a bit of setup on Linux. First install a win11 vm, you can do it graphically via `virtual machine manager` from libvirt. Then install remmina and configure a profile `ms-malware11.remmina`, also graphically. In that profile, under Advanced, have Startup Program "AutoDesk.exe" or whatever that is called.
Then Autodesk runs like any linux application, the user doesn't see it runs in a vm. This feature depends on RemoteApp feature in Windows.
This is something your mom probably wouldn't setup by hand, but anybody here should be able to.
Unfortunately my parents run macos and these tools are not meant for Macos. But like you said there are apps like UTM that provide a nice shell for QEMU on macos. Not as nice as streaming just the app, but a good start. These work great on new macmini with apple silicon.
Or gamers that are already used to Windows. So inertia.
I think people like me are the real first line that's most likely to switch - techy people who play games (which had so far kept them on Windows) and that suffer firsthand at Microsoft's attempts to get them directly in addition to already being treated horribly by default. This group is less afraid of changing things up and has more incentives to switch. But if we talk of gamers in general, it may take a while until a meaningful number of them switch over, even though they are far more motivated than the average PC user. Even though they're the prime candidates, it's going to be a very, very steep uphill battle.
Your first step is start swapping out Windows-specific programs for cross-platform alternatives. Eventually you'll have to just cut the rest loose and make the jump though. Don't bother dual-booting either or you'll just delay it further.
I made the transition a few years ago and it was far less dramatic than I imagined.
Don't forget to back up.
What a ridiculous idea. Any serious person knows that a modern operating system must, above all, be profitable, profitable and profitable. Caring about people doesn't make you any money, and since you already make up most of the market, it's not like you need to entice anyone over.
A slightly less provocative and crass version of the above, yet one that still conveys the exact same message, is probably what most of the higher-ups of the software world believe. At least the ones that call the shots seem to.
able to run on any hardware
free for basic usage, paid for commercial usage
lightweight, simple, stripped of all cruft and extras
consistent in it's UI and cleaned up from 40 years of inconsistencies
But they didn't - so people are looking for alternatives.
I grew up with Microsoft and now you have to pay me to use their products. I would never choose their OS for product hosting. Even their embedded / IoT is trying to force a Microsoft account and push against local user.
Desktops existed before punching in your credit card numbers was a common thing, that history is hard to shrug.
Xbox for gamers, mobile for everyone else and business editions of windows for the enterprise.
and, unfortunately, they are not alone. Google has been doing this for years and Apple is slowly following suit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
Minimum 50% of cases (in anything). Probably higher
Math is hard.
Says who? I did a gap year service project and graduated at age 23. My business partner did a 3-2 program and graduated at 23.
Plus, anyone working as an engineer then has a 8 figure net worth and the overwhelming majority moved on long ago.
Then again, I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem
Yes, they do. Unfortunately even MS employees are powerless to do anything about the crap that gets shoved into Windows by other employees working at the company, and the ones who complain about it are quietly shown the door or have already left of their own will, leaving only those who are completely apathetic or...
Then again, I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem
Exactly. That and the desire to remain in the country --- part of the reason why companies like H-1Bs so much is because they are going to be far more docile and less willing to resist doing things they feel are wrong.
They don't make money (put bread on the table) by selling Windows any more. That is soooo 2000s.
Income is from data mining and from subscriptions to cloudy offerings that are mostly MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
Oh, and hyping their perceived value to the point that the term "meme stock" is no longer just a joke.
Nvidia is doing something similar where they're just extracting as much as possible out of AI companies and not caring one bit about consumers.
How does whatever microsoft is doing to windows line up with that?
It's just a different way to say "you're the product, not the customer" if you look at the statement from a neutral perspective - the whale being the actual customer, who changes all the time depending on what Microsoft MBAs think might have the highest potential value they can extract.
Who's the "whale" in this context? Windows users who subscribe to copilot? Enterprise? Advertisers?
So consumers are mostly ignored, except as a testbed to shove AI and ads.
And lose all the OEM license money?
Just hypothetically... of course they're not actually doing this?
----
Anywho, doesn't matter cause my Xeon went from Windows 10 to Linux, this year. Still rocking a Win7Pro Core2Duo (as my second favorite machine).
I don't understand what's going on at Microsoft, but they leave huge stacks of money on the table. LTSC versions weren't "popular", they were the least worst option for a lot of industries. And now they kinda completely ignored all customer feedback.
As was Windows NT & 2000 for their time.
95 good, NT 4 bad, 98 good, 98 SE bad, 2000 good, Me bad, XP good, Vista bad, 7 good...
The plan with Windows 10 was to light their desktop market share on fire in the hopes they could see iPads in the distance and try to chase them. Windows 11 was codenamed "give your toxic ex a second chance."
Windows is an OS for the people who use the users.
Now, it should be "where do we want you to go today?"
I run Active Directory at home, for various reasons. I’ve got Group Policy in a good enough shape now that I’m not terribly troubled by Microsoft’s enshittification but it took substantial effort to get there, and it requires some work to maintain.
... While also maintaining their famous backwards compatibility?
Just look at google and their chat softwares... you either make something new, or someone else does and you're left behind... be it ads in their start menu, spyware "AI", or paid solitaire.
A few industries reward that. Telcos and other parts of critical infrastructure come to mind.
Is goal is increase revenue! Create project to roll out fibre to a new rural community. Sign up all 40 houses in that community at $100 a month.
Project cost $10 mil.
Bonuses and promotions for increased revenue!
I hate adobes current business model and for that matter fusion360 as well. It’s all internet required bullshit but it’s making them tons of money and there are no viable alternatives.
I work in e-waste recycling, and it's my first Windows-free job. A family friend called me for advice on her old decrepit laptop. I told her about my work "laptop": a Surface Pro tablet with Linux. I just sold one to her, partially on the security and privacy advantages of Linux.
How does one get into this, preferably without having to be a yardie for a few years (I'm an electrician with a degree in chemistry)?
Fellow Win7Pro retro machiner.
And until Linux implements similar abstractions in the Kernel akin to Filter Drivers in Windows, Linux will never have a proper anticheat.
Not sure how much gamers with a modicum of awareness (already a minority) will care, but the risk is there. We could paraphrase that famous line to say that "The 'S' in 'Kernel anticheat' stands for Security".
I think the success of the Steam Deck has really helped the situation, and the titles that are broken because of anticheat are not important enough to me to keep a Windows system around.
I don't mind Windows being relegated to a niche of the stuff that runs CS while Linux based OS works for every other purpose.
Oh and rootkit level EAC? Expect that to go away on Windows too when MS finally gets sick of Crowdstrike and that ilk causing self inflicted Denial of Service attacks on whole economic sectors.
It’s one of the bigger failures of antitrust enforcement I can think of
(I can think of much larger screw ups involving lack of antitrust enforcement, to be clear.)
EDIT: sorry, I completely misread your comment. You're right about the latency issue, but that's also an issue with client-side prediction implementations, which provide a small window in which all client packets are trusted, rather than just the latest ones (eg to be able to rewind when computing collision detection in a fast paced shooter)
The real challenge to solve is botting, which includes things like aimbots, macros the negate recoil, etc. It's basically impossible to solve this, regardless of operating system or hardware (eg external cheat peripherals)
I see it as a moderation issue, which is unavoidable. Just focus on building tools to help users report cheaters rather than try to automate the whole thing via flawed anticheat spyware, and missing out on potentially the next big PC gaming platform in the process.
It's not. But it is much more expensive on the server-side, i.e. paid by the company, so the real solution of mainframe + thin clients is not one that companies want to implement. Instead, they rely on computing on the client model, which is what opens up the door to cheats.
E.g. Aimbots and Recoil suppressors are non existent if it's the server calculating trajectories and telling the clients "your bullet hit exactly here (X, Y, Z), go draw an impact texture in there". But as said, that means a lot of computing done on the server. Not cheap, but given the $millions invested so far in anticheat tech over the years, one has to wonder if it wouldn't really be cheaper, after all...
Some Valve guy gave a great talk about their cheating detection a while back; I found it incredibly impressive: https://youtu.be/ObhK8lUfIlc (can't comment on their effectiveness these days, haven't played CS in a long time)
But I know what you mean. Another niche that really doesn't go well on Linux is VR.
I'm glad none of the games that require this really appeal to me these days
Name one thing that needs it.
With Arch Linux + the nvidia-open package, the Linux desktop experience is miles better than when I last tried in 2017 with Ubuntu
Personally I have been playing it on Arch Linux since release and it has always worked just fine, besides it being a deeply janky game regardless of OS.
Happy diving.
Building products on top of Windows seems to limit the lifetime of the product to whatever support Microsoft seem to be willing to provide.
The best time to migrate off Windows was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
Microsoft isn't abandoning these markets. They've been min-maxing consumer software enshittification for years now and doing an extremely good job, but they still have good options for enterprise.
I make such comments. Tell me: what exactly is problematic about medical, offshore drilling, etc industries which makes it difficult or impossible to switch?
... wanna hire me to work on that? I am convinced that, whatever the cost is, it will be cheaper than using software on a very-outdated very-proprietary operating system for another couple of decades.
All these reasons suck, but they’re all reality in one industry or another sadly.
Linux kernel is open source and really easy to read, and also fairly easy to write drivers for.
> proprietary protocols
I've written many network softwares, and proprietary protocols aren't difficult to me.
> vendor warranties/support
Fuck vendor lock-in. Move to Linux.
> licensing/relicensing
Fuck vendors.
> paying you to do the work
...is cheaper than paying vendors.
> waiting for the work to be done/tested
Here, let me demonstrate that it works... with many many many automated tests.
> * paying for workforce re-training*
Not really important if it's well-done.
> justifying this to management
A lot of business management can't see past their own nose until it comes to money. Do some maths and show them the cost savings in a presentation. They'll listen.
The best option in these cases is to isolate the system from external networks to keep it secured and keep operating until the organization can afford a major capital expenditure to replace everything.
I ran out of patience years ago for the inevitable results of letting an unaccountable third party own decision-making on your critical systems. I'd much rather have that argument when the CEOs aren't breathing down our necks.
You clearly dont understand that you dont get to make those decisions. Your users need software X to do Y as a business requirement. Are you going to tell them fuck off because you dont support windows? Sure, you could, once.
And no manager would ever okay someone writing a fuckton of driver shit or reverse engineering some protocols just so you can be high king and not use a specific OS.
Fact is business needs drive whats used, and you do not get a say in it, you might think you do, but you really dont. You can give information and options but ultimately it wont be your decision and youll support what the business needs you to support, or you wont be with the business anymore.
Yeah i agree vendors suck and so do license related shit, but you arent going to convince management that you could write a superior product AND support it for less than the cost the vendor would charge the company. And yes, this isnt always true, there are obviously some times when it is actually better to do it yourself, or use a foss solution. You still wont win in most cases. Users are going to use the thing they need and if youre blocking them from moving forward, youre more problem than the software youre trying to stop deployment of.
Even if for now the stats (e.g. steam hardware survey), show only a slight increase in Linux users (and a lot of them could be dual booting)
I should have a valid license for windows, my Win 8 Pro license (which I paid full price for, like $150) should have worked for Windows 10 (and then transfered to 11) but it's not working anymore for whatever reason, I probably upgraded without disabling the key somewhere or whatever. So when I use Windows I have that "activation required" nag watermark now. When microsoft finally remotely kills my unactivated windows 10 install (a week from now? 6 months?) I'm just not going back. The only reason I dual boot these days is fusion 360 CAD and there's a steam install on there so it's probably showing up as a windows install even though I haven't played games on there in probably years.
Windows will probably continue on forever simply due to inertia but this "you have to have a web login to use your private computer" b.s. is going to turn off a lot of consumers, and this will be the watershed moment where Proton/Wine finally moves from 5, to 10 or 15% of users
Cloud-based profit. The "computer user" model is dead.
They very likely foresee the demise of PC as a platform altogether and are trying their best to shepherd us into their other products.
Consider what our industry will look like once the surveillance as a service/enshittifcation that’s been implemented for windows is ported to those things.
Try switching away from the services I mentioned, and you’ll see why the strategy makes sense.
and you will like it. so says MS.
I believe once( this is an urban legend) a manufacturer in a middle income country considered going with Linux to save money and Microsoft flew out a sales rep next day to put a stop to it.
Microsoft likes it when you get a "deal" and buy a pro key for 10$. Whatever, you'll subscribe to half a dozen Microwave services ideally paying them 30$ to 40$ a month forever.
The last thing they want is you to try Linux.
However, I had the joy of watching multiple Linux desktop environments crash when I switched to my Bluetooth headphones.
Cinnamon and Budgie both crashed. No one knows why. I had to switch to Mate and then spend another 20 minutes trying to get it look ok.
No typical user wants to deal with this. They'd assume Linux doesn't work and move on.
Sometimes, while I do things on a browser, I get a BSOD, no warning.
Some mornings, usually when I left important work open and half finished the night before, my computer decides to do an update and all my open windows, tabs, reference documents etc are gone, as if someone came and cleared my workbench mid project and now I need to set up all my shit again from scratch.
My personal laptop is a 10 year old POS thinkpad T-something with Linux Mint. Biggest issue is I forget to properly shut it down, and to plug it in every now and then, and the shot battery runs down. Admittedly, the bluetooth is sometimes a little iffy, but I've spent 0 effort trying to resolve it. I just open the lid, and my computer is ready for me. Boots up in an instant and always in the state I left it in (unless I let the battery run down).
My new, modern, high spec, high ram, high-res laptop is easily an order of magnitude more frustrating to use than my linux shitbox laptop.
I quit my job, and bought the laptop from the company. It's getting a wipe this weekend and some flavour of linux, and the wife is getting it as a belated christmas gift. She's due an upgrade, and I decided she's ready to move to linux now.
Linux has the reputation of being buggy and hard to fix, so some people don't put any effort in finding the solution, but windows has its fair share of issues too.
non urban legend: Munich migrated whole city (15K computers) to Linux saving millions. Microsoft moved their German HQ to Munich to win back the contract, and year later city announced removing linux and going back to windows.
Have they closed the double install trick?
1. Install once with ms account and activate.
2. Reinstall offline with local account.
3. It will be activated when you go back online.
I suspect the remote server remember your computer hardware generated guid
- Embedded IE making multi-version browser testing an absolute PITA
- Rolled out WGA and screwed up bulk-licensing and multi-tier/versioned licensing for cluster operations and emerging mobile hardware
- Allowed arbitrary code to be embedded in the registry
MS: "One way or another, you are creating an account so help me God."
My problem is that Windows fucks up my user name when I log in to my account when setting up a new machine. I drives me up the wall.
My name is Daniel. My name on my MS account is Daniel. When I log in to a new Windows machine, the fucking thing decides my user name, and therefore my user folder, is "Danie". This is NOT my name, it's a different name that is not mine and it makes my computer grating to use every time.
For some retarded reason, windows does not allow online account users to have a username longer than 5 chars, so it goes and truncates whatever the first name it gets back from the mothership when logging in. A local account does not have this issue.
Maybe next AAA stuff will start to target ARM and natively ARM OSes?
What I don't get is why MS refuses to let you pay to avoid the circus - It's like a streaming service that only has the ad-financed tier!
I get that the people who care are a minority, but charging that minority a high purchase price for a just-the-os version of windows seems like easy money and would let them dodge all the badwill by presenting a choice.
Right now the official option is simply "suffer the circus or leave". It should at least be amended with "or pay".
Then upgrade and reboot until it deactivates, then it should let you fix it with your microsoft account... Once that happens, you can remove the microsoft account from your computer.
I happily paid $500 for a perpetual VS2026 license just a few days ago, but I'll continue to use things like massgrave for windows no matter how big my cash pile grows. I know it's the same company, but it's really not about the money. It's about sending some kind of a message regarding software quality.
If you could give me an experience identical to VS on Linux I would move in an instant. But it simply doesn't exist. It's frankly not even close after all these years. VSCode is like the IDE "we have at home". Linux is a great target for many things now (e.g., steam deck), but using it as my daily driver development platform is still a non-starter.
I know it's possible to make anything work on Linux, but that's not a very compelling argument for me anymore. It's got to work well. The experience can't suck ass. Even the steam deck was a herky jerky OOBE with WiFi/networking woes and 5-6 reboots to get it going. That's with Gabe Newell ~in charge using billions of dollars to make it go smoothly. I don't have access to those kinds of resources so I figure why even try. I've already thrown ~5k hours into the Linux hole over my lifetime. I don't think it's an investment that has paid off very well for me. Linus himself has acknowledged that the win32 ABI is the most stable and well designed he's ever seen. Why wouldn't I follow his advice?
The product today doesn’t feel like the product I worked on; I feel no connection to it, and every time I think that there’s nothing they could do to make me dislike it any more, Microsoft has another “hey, hold my beer and watch this” moment.
The problem with the old Microsoft this that it was run by engineers who didn’t understand user experience. The problem now is that it’s run by MBAs who dont care about users, just licenses.
How do you all deal with (extended) family? This Christmas I spent time with my parents and the topic of Windows 11 came up again with all of its associated dark patterns.
What do you all do to help them out of this madness? Is Ubuntu/Fedora/etc the best option for seniors? My dad's entire career was in Silicon Valley 1.0 where Excel/Outlook was his bread and butter and feels married to Windows, but ever since leaving the workforce those skills are more of a hindrance than an asset.
Now that he's retired, he still uses Excel to plan vacations for example, but Windows is riddled with this BS and I am powerless to help him navigate this anti-consumer behavior. It's incredible that Microsoft is shooting their most loyal customers in the foot with this BS.
Do you all help your parents remotely? What kind of issues do you run into being your parents IT support?
They click on the browser icon and that's all they ever use.
For those of you who haven't already had to deal with today's 70 year old MCI sufferers and technology, it is already a complete shitshow, and that generation lived half their adult lives without mobile technology.
Imagine finding 12 renewing subscriptions to malwarebytes and other security suites. Or having to burn credit cards every month because they can no longer tell the difference between ads/scams and actual needs. Microsoft, of course, helpfully shovels those scams straight to them via the operating system now. The corporations of America have figured out that milking our elders is good for a quick buck, and it is in their interests to make sure no safety nets are in place. Once they are required, they'll game whatever that system is too.
It is all the control battles our parents fought with their parents over driving, but now it is about the phone/tablet/computer, but not being able to take the phone away as a practical matter because the (first) world expects everyone to have them.
SSO and recovery keys are a problem for proxy account administrators - especially with the banking and medical sectors which still rely solely on SMS. Sites such as login.gov won't allow multiple accounts to have the same phone number. So if both you and your parents need accounts for social security, you as the caregiver can't use your phone as the second factor for their account.
For added fun, many organizations, including banks and the US Government/various federal pension boards, refuse to recognize a power of attorney letter, either. The entire modern situation leaves caregiver children having to commit technical TOS violation/fraud/perjury just to get accounts reset or to (re)gain access to submit address changes.
Ouch! That's got to make things hard!
That's thankfully not a problem where I live. Here the problem is more that the banks might be a little over-eager to take agency away from seniors, since once they get a whiff of their grandson helping them with their banking and what not, they lock their account and claim to have broken their TOS or the law regarding not having other people control their account, and that if you want people to do that, you need that power of attorney.
Honestly, this is a lot better than the alternative of not being vigilant enough, and I'd honestly argue that it's better to let there be as little shame as possible in handing over your banking to your next of kind, so that when it starts getting really bad, it's not too late. But this obviously gets very individual very quickly. One senior will handle their banking just fine until their 105, while the next gets Alzheimer at 55, while the next starts to have to put a lot more effort into doing it right at 75, but they don't have any next of kin they can trust to not slowly empty their savings account once they get the power of attorney.
I dread the day I have to get more involved in their healthcare from afar, precisely because of the technology gap. The money grab from big-pharma is going to unrelenting
She switches it on, double-clicks the Firefox icon, and it opens up.
That's it. That's the whole thing. I did originally have it set to just launch Firefox full screen on startup, but she didn't like it like that.
As much as Windows is deeply flawed, the user interface challenges with Linux are difficult to overcome. Until there is a version of Linux where you don’t have to open the console, Windows will keep its market.
Maybe Windows back in e.g. Windows 2000 days would have some sort of claim to user interface discoverability and predictability which no Linux distribution would have. That ship has sailed; Windows today is a shitshow.
This is already the case from the Grandma use case, i.e. nothing more than a web browser and maybe Thunderbird and an office program. The terminal issue doesn't come up until you start getting into people who know just enough to be dangerous (myself included).
The larger issue is that computers with Linux pre-installed are (within a rounding error) not a thing, and thus Grandma can't go out and buy one. Telling her to install it on her current computer makes about as much sense to her as asking her to flob the nerfwhizzle. And even if she could, would she place her bets on a (to her) completely new computer system? Not without help or solid recommendations from trusted sources.
The mom and dad gen are all on iPads or just phones from what I can tell. Very few people there use PCs for their personal computing (work is another matter, but mostly not relevant to this discussion), and those that do are more power user-y. This group largely don't need help beyond edge cases in my experience.
The grandma and grandpa generation are mostly the same story, but there's a lot more who have more or less just bailed completely outside of the absolute essentials (online banking, literal phone calls). Some are still on PCs out of a desire to not change things too much, but I'd imagine switching them over to an iPad is probably an overall improvement once you can get past the unwillingness to shift over to another system. The fact that Windows 11 is such hot garbage will hopefully aid in convincing people of that.
For those who still want a PC, there's Linux. My grandma is on Mint, but that's just because I'm her personal tech support. If I weren't around, she'd have bought a Windows 11 machine from whatever idiot at the local electronics store. I can't imagine that would have gone very well. She'd have probably bailed completely on computing if it came to that.
Very few people in this group of people need software beyond what basic Linux can provide, so Linux should be able to provide a better environment than Windows, but that are loads of potential edge cases, but they're all very small, but all very annoying if you find yourself in one.
> What kind of issues do you run into being your parents IT support?
Mom and Dad: 'Hey, can you help me with this website?' -> 'It's broken, try again tomorrow.' or 'Try that button there.'.
Grandma: See previous.
'How do I do [thing that hasn't changed since Windows 95]'?
'What do I do here?' -> 'Read the message on the screen and act accordingly.'
'My mouse doesn't work!' -> 'Check the batteries.'
Most of these later issues are because she treats the computer mechanistically, one unchanging step at a time, so if anything doesn't go to plan, she functionally panics. I don't know how to solve this problem, but it seems endemic to me given how common of a trope it is in stories from computer savvy people helping the not-so-savvy.
I can't remember where I heard about it, but it probably comes from the fact that a large-ish portion of the population can't connect concepts to things that don't have tangible forms. Thus, all the invisible processes inside any computer (files, memory, networking) that any computer savvy person will be aware of, don't exist and don't make sense in the mind of the not computer savvy, since it has no tangible form. You can find a similar case with office phone systems. Transferring a call is apparently hard for a number of people, since a call isn't a tangible item, doing anything with it makes zero sense. At best you can get them to place calls on hold, but that's only because their office phone will have buttons with blinking lights that say 'Line 1' and 'Line 2' on them, and they can thus easily connect the light blinking with the call on hold. Suddenly it's tangible, and thus it can make sense.
The more time I spend online the more I'm convinced I have never had a unique experience.
Thankfully, I don't have to deal with this every couple of days. Dad rarely ventures outside of his comfort zone, so needing to help him with some website is a very rare occurrence. Grandma is mostly fine so long as absolutely nothing changes. While they don't change every day, they do change every so often, in ways that I have to really focus to even see sometimes, but which apparently instantly throw her of her trail (while at the same time she's incapable of reading an error message that takes up a fairly large portion of her screen! I'm baffled to this day, but there's nothing that can be done about it). If her online bank and the few other services she rarely interacts with never change in even the slightest way for the next 20 years, I'd imagine I'd never need to be her tech support again, barring the batteries in her mouse dying again, or her computer itself kicking the bucket.
Sure, it sucks about the phone activation thing, but frankly... STOP USING WINDOWS ALREADY.
People who complain that Windows isn't what they want are missing the point. Windows isn't for you. macOS, Linux, and more obscure choices still exist for general purpose computing. SteamOS or various Steam focused Linux distros exist for gaming. ChromeOS exists as a less offensive and more reliable thin OS.
Trying to force Windows into being something it isn't is a waste of your time.
The quote is usually delivered as a punchline of sorts, but we're rapidly approaching a world where there truly will be only five computers. If you define a computer as a system capable of truly general purpose computing, and if you count the computers as systems each capable of operating truly independently of the others. The term "general purpose" needs the further qualification, that a great deal of power and political capital will be needed to have any say in what purpose one of these five computers will be put to, and it will then be forced on the other people who are forced to work with that computer.
God these companies are insufferable.
i do feel the ecosystem isn't broad enough for linux to become consumer facing. E.g., if you buy a random chinese made writing tablet and tried using it on linux, it has less than even chance of working straight out the box.
Similarly with bluetooth, wifi (for laptops), etc.
The problem is that OEM are locked into windows, so you have the chicken/egg problem where OEM won't want to spend effort on linux compatibility without a large customer base, and customer base won't grow unless they know for sure it is always going to work for _any_ piece of hardware they might purchase.
May be steam machine and valve could be the push it needs to establish a large customer base.
My mother doesn't need to worry about typing `chmod` into her android mobile terminal.
I've been doing experiments over the last 10 or so years, I've been borrowing my Linux laptops to people, and to my surprise, they had absolutely no problem using it. Especially children, you just start using GNOME as if it's nothing. They are already used to different phones, different kinds of computers, it really makes no difference to them. Your mother is probably checking gmail, watching youtube, and maybe writing google docs, not much else.
Mint is very similar to Windows UI
I guess mildly privacy concious gamer was not one of target their demographics.
Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45497384
I’ll be upgrading to Win 11 and activating it with an internet connection. And I won’t think twice about it.
Even better, use the LTSC releases.