Remember when Microsoft said Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows?
Technically it was just a Microsoft Tech Evangelist that said that, in a non official capacity, and I’m pretty sure the sales people took him to the torture chamber after that.
From a technical point of view, there was nothing stopping Microsoft from making Windows 10 a rolling release, so I can see how some naive fools might have convinced themselves that their employer wouldn’t be shitty to their users for the first time ever.
at some point we’ll be renting windows, not buying it. so there will be a “last windows you’ll ever buy”. if microsoft had their way, we’d be at that point now (they’ve run trials on subscription-based windows way back in the early win7 days). but us lowly users are probably ‘safe’ until whatever’s after 12.
I would agree if not for the fact they keep making it easier to get windows for free. I haven’t bought windows in over a decade, activation is easy af, the days of sketchy malware riddled keygens are long gone.
The truth is worse, imo. They don’t need individual consumers to pay for the OS, OEM licenses are where they make bank anyways. At the consumer level, you’re never gonna sell enough copies, even on a subscription model, to profit more than you would be from giving it away for free, getting everyone using it, and then simply selling their data until the end of time.
Not to mention Microsoft’s profits aren’t from the OS but what they get from the user once they have the OS. Once they have the Windows user they then have a market to sell other Microsoft products, not to mention all the stuff on the Windows store. (And of course advertising data)
They don’t need profits from the OS as the OS pays for itself in the long run.
It wasn’t just a tech evangelist. Our Microsoft sales people were telling us that feature updates would mean no more major os versions.
Used Ubuntu for a year and while initially it was nice, I got tired of having to spend two weeks learning which magic spells to chant at my computer every time I wanted to install a given application.
I’d use Mac again, except that it tries to punish you every time you go outside the Apple box. For me, Windows is the right balance of ease of use, scaling degrees of complexity, and ability to boldly go where I have no damn business going.
Your experience may vary, and that’s good, because you shouldn’t have to like what I like, and vice versa.
I’ve actually started to find Windows to be more difficult than Linux for many things.
Simply because windows requires using config user interfaces and they keep on changing where the setting UI I need to use can be found. When I search for instructions on how to do something, many times the instructions are for a different version of windows so I have to spend a lot of time trying to find where they’ve moved the setting to.
Sure some bash command can seem basically like a magic incantation. But I’ve learned enough to understand bash well enough to know when an incantation is suspicious, the rest is just copy and pasting text into a terminal window.
And really “apt install” is what I’m doing 99% of the time. Sure it’s not clicky clicky, but it’s consistent.
Yup. I’ve been using linux off and on since middle school - just installed Arch on my laptop because I felt like tinkering and such, but I’ve tried dozens of distros over the years, even fully switching for months at a time, and for a daily driver Windows is still unbeatable for me - sometimes I do feel like messing with my computer, but not all the time.
I rarely have to tinker with Windows more than a bit to get it doing what I want.
However, I do wanna get to the point where I’m as comfortable/knowledgeable with Linux as I am with Windows, but it’s definitely a wildly different beast.
I find it wild that your experience is that Linux is difficult to install software, but that said: I’m not constantly trying to install Windows software.
It’s probably why windows 12 will continue to remove words and replace actions with icons. Eventually the whole OS will be hieroglyphs for buttons.
I’d use Mac again, except that it tries to punish you every time you go outside the Apple box
I’ll admit I haven’t used a Mac for a little over 5 years now, but when I did use one this did not match my experience at all. I never had any trouble getting it to do what I wanted, and I rarely used any Apple ecosystem stuff because I was always Apple laptop + windows desktop + Android phone and needed cross-platform tools.
It’s not as free as Linux for sure, but all these people talking about a walled garden feel like they’ve hardly used a Mac at all and are just assuming it must be similar to iOS, because nothing about my experience felt like a walled garden.
Mac is definitely the lowest wall in Apple’s garden. Most people should be able to step over.
Windows 12: Paintbrush now comes with ads to Microsoft’s subscription AI Paintbrush service. Also bucket fill is now a $0.49 DLC.
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“What to make quick copies of certain areas of the image? Buy 100 packs of both ‘Copy’ and ‘Paste’ tokens now on sale in the Microsoft store! Each use of Copy or Paste function uses only 1 token. Make sure you stock up for ‘Back to School’!”
That’s going to be in the free upgrade to Windows 10 and 11. Back porting some critical features to old, but still supported releases, is an essential part of good customer support.
Don’t let your guard down. Maybe this time they’ll fully pull the TPM/UEFI trigger and make it impossible to install any other OS on new PCs… they have lots of leverage over manufacturers to tighten the screws on the BIOS and boot process.
The European Commission would appreciate the multi billion euro “donation” from Microsoft if they did something so obviously anti competitive.
I agree, but also when has a threat of a fine ever stopped a capitalist from doing what they want? They just call it the cost of doing business.
I don’t think they would hard shoot themselves in the foot like that thankfully/sadly? idk my opinions on it. They would start with company graded devices before doing a consumer lockdown, since they are less apt to get massive backlash from that, they have tried already and backtracked iirc with lenovo systems
I hope you’re right. But the only reason it hasn’t gone as far as it has it because everyone watches them and pushes back. I remember the ARM-based Windows laptops they tried pushing, which had fully-locked bootloaders (WinRT?) That’s their endgame…
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Haha I have read about the ways to defeat the bogus Win11 CPU checks. A fake check to enforce the upgrade treadmill!
Okay I’m not very technical but I hate Microsoft with every fiber of my being and want desperately to break from them but can’t bring myself to switch my regular and gaming PCs to Linux. It just feels like too much work like I’d be starting over and most of all I just fear change. Is there a good YT series/channel or blog or something I can check out that might make things a little less intimidating?
Folks have mentioned dual boot before but you can also run Linux directly from a usb stick, without changing anything on your computer. You can try it to see what it’s like and when you remove the stick it’ll be like it was never there.
Dude, with the exception of Gamepass, Linux gaming is really easy.
If you’re okay with Redhat/Fedora, using Nobara Linux (it’s a spin-off, unofficial, but by the guy who does a lot of the Proton [magic compatibility sauce] stuff, GloriousEggroll, who AFAIK is a dev at RedHat) literally installs everything you need.
Steam → Steam
GoG/Epic → Heroic Launcher
Amazon/Blizzard → Lutris
Gamepass → You have to use the cloud version with Edge browserClick, install, game.
There’s only a few Anticheat PITA titles still (I believe Valorant is one) that won’t work.
Notable to the list of titles that won’t work is Destiny 2.
Having said that, I’ve been using Linux as my daily driver for everything, including gaming, since June, and I haven’t run into many issues. It’s certainly worth the minor hassle entailed to get some titles to work, if only to get away from Windows 100%. You can always dual boot.
If you aren’t very technical, I would also consider Linux Mint. You won’t always have access to the latest and greatest, but it’s simple and very easy to learn if you’re coming from Windows.
As a recovering Destiny addict:
Wow what a feature.
That’s really great if you don’t play online games, but 90% of what my gaming pc is used for is online, competitive gaming that doesn’t work on Linux.
Pretty much any game with an anti-cheat is a non-starter since anti-cheats being Linux compatible tends to mean they’re less effective. (Yes EAC is a config switch, but it runs at a less effective level on all platforms if enabled)
Heroic has Amazon games
I’d suggest setting up linux in a virtual machine first to get familiar with it first. There’s many many distros out there and if you don’t like the one you’re trying, just try another one. When you have one you like, you can install it for real.
It’s not nearly as hard as people make it out to be. For most distros you’ll likely have a system with a browser, libre office, steam (except games aren’t going to work well in a VM), etc. up and running in about an hour or two. It only really gets tricky if you’re trying to get some janky hardware working.
Look at protonDB for game compatibility and try out a live USB with some easy to use linux version like Ubuntu. Most games will work except if they have anticheat.
You’ve got some time to plan out your transition :)
I’d pick up a Raspberry Pi 400 or a renewed Steam Deck depending on your budget. Those devices have amazing communities and both will build familiarity and confidence with the environment just through play. Find a project that interests you with one of those devices and follow along trying to re-create it. That’s where you’ll find most of your blog/YT stuff. I’d be happy to help try and find a project if you’d be up for talking about some of your interests or hobbies.
IMO the most important thing is to start using cross platform applications (E.g. LibreOffice, the GIMP) on Windows as well as you start learning the Linux environments. Especially if you are coming from the windows 7 or earlier era of gaming PC building, actually installing Linux is a piece of cake. Once you have confidence with the programs you’ll be using and the resources available you’ll have conquered a lot of the fear.
Honestly you’d be fine starting out with installing linux yourself 90% of the time, but I think it’s worth the peace of mind to start out with a pre-installed distro on a well standardized platform like the rPi 4 or the Steam Deck.
Or just create a VM.
I don’t usually recommend a VM for learning linux TBH. It is a cheap way to get access, and for labs it can be convenient, but virtualization is kinda hit and miss on consumer UEFI and CPUs. Grabbing a rPI 400 is a far more consistent user experience.
but virtualization is kinda hit and miss on consumer UEFI and CPUs
It is? I have never had any real problems with either Hyper-v nor Virtual box.
I haven’t tried a huge variety of computers, only like 3 CPUs (and one xeon but I wouldn’t call that consumer). Two of those were the same computer but with a different motherboard and CPU and the other one is my mid range ThinkPad x280 with an i5 and 8 GB of ram and that works good enough.
But a Raspberry Pi 3/4/400 is always good of course.
Ever hear of Secure Time Seeding? It’s real, and fits this meme perfectly.
Ugh, 12 is announced already? Seems like we just got 11!
I seem to remember them saying 10 was going to be the last one, too
Win 12 is obligated to be good due to the “every other version of Windows” rule, which has been true forever.
Is Windows 11 worse than 10? I honestly haven’t noticed much difference (after moving the taskbar icons to where they belong on the left).
The issue is that Win11 requires a computer with TPM built in and that only applies to computers from the last couple years. Just speaking from personal experience, most of my friends with PCs can’t upgrade to 11 even if they wanted to.
I use the tpm requirement as a backup to make sure Microsoft won’t update my pc. Made sure it’s disabled in bios and I don’t even get prompts
It might as well be the same but with more features moved to registry
Windows 11 was better than 10 aesthetically tho?
Vista was better aesthetically than Windows xp, it was still dog shit.
Also, heavily disagree. Literally the only good thing windows 11 did imo was finally unifying some of the settings that were split between the settings app and the OG control panel.
Reddit hivemind is back to downvote any opinion that they disagree with. Like the other commenter said, I prefer functionality in place of design.
Even though I found 11’s UI far more polished, the UX is a disaster with yet another refresh of elements that didn’t need any changes.Without unneeded changes we would have the modern desktop experience
Windows 11 has tabbed file explorer, a package manager, it’s quick, the interface looks nice and feels nice, and it’s been really stable for me. I don’t know where the complaints are at, it’s been great. All they need to do is regress all of the ads-in-your-OS stuff from 10. Bring back the start menu that doesn’t hang for 30 seconds looking something up online before showing you your installed programs.
(They’re not going to regress that)
(They’ll add more)
8 was better than 10
I’m so excited
Windows 12 dev employee: what if … what if… We break the taskbar into bits.
Wait wait wait… I think we can uh… maybe just maybe not add bloat… Turns around to see the employer… Gulp
Turns back to screen… Adding bloat is always the answer… Right boss?
I am waiting for an taskbar, entirely replaced by bing chat. You will never find anything with seconds of the delay, besides internet websites and is horrible to use with bad internet. Offline mode will also not be available anymore, because Microsoft needs funktion critical telemetry
I have no idea what Windows 11 contains…
Each new version of Windows is just Microsoft trying to further tighten the screws on its captive userbase.
They’ve not brought anything of real value to customers in years.
The only interesting feature is WSL2 with the possibility to “natively” mount Linux filesystems.
It might be a problem to many of us if they do something stupid to GitHub…
They did already
Switch to gitea
True, the access tokens instead of logging in is a pain, and it’s probably a grasp to force users to use their shitty interface rather than do everything in the terminal and just push it to the repo. The free storage do be convenient tho…
If you looking for free storage you can also look at codeberg
Windows 11 is my favorite Windows release ever. They finally focused their efforts on modern, forward thinking design.
Fight me.
