If you’re too lazy to switch to Linux like me, Windows 10 Enterprise IoT LTSC is supported until 2032 and free to download and permanently license.
As someone who is lazy, I find running Linux to be less work than fighting with Windows.
There’s no struggle free OS, every OS has operations and processes that will need more detailed investigation, and hence read as “fighting with the operating system”.
No design is intuitive to everyone, all the time, and in all situations. I’m sure Linux is fine, but let’s be real, you know what I mean.
I’m glad that Linux is more intuitive to you than Windows. Good job finding it, and setting it all up 👍
Honestly, a lot of desktop environments are designed to feel very similar to Windows. I tried Mint on a laptop and started liking it right away. The setup was put it on a flash drive, and run the installer. It took 20 minutes to nuke Windows.
My OS struggles come from trying to get windows-specific DAWs and CAD Software to work, which will hopefully come around as more people switch to Linux. I have some alternatives that I’m playing with right now.
Fyi, Reaper and Bitwig both have excellent, native Linux support. If you’re willing to re-learn a DAW, both of those are great choices. Reaper is by far the best mixing & mastering DAW out there, IMHO. Bitwig is great for composition and has awesome, intuitive modulation features, as well as great stock plugins and MPE support.
How tough was the DAW to get working? FL is basically the thing keeping me on Windows at this point
I haven’t made any recent attempts to get FL Studio working again, but from what I understand, Bottles can set up an install pretty easily. Reinstalling your VSTs can be done through Bottles as well, so it’s one folder containing everything.
The part that takes energy and effort is making the switch.
I’m really familiar with Linux. I’ve been using it on and off since the days of Slackware. My work computer was Linux-only for several years.
But, even with that, it took weird driver issues with my GPU, combined with the impending death of Windows 10, combined with the ridiculous heavy handed Copilot BS on Windows to finally convince me to switch my main desktop PC to Linux.
It was just the momentum that was so hard to overcome. I knew what worked in Windows, and I knew what didn’t. I had already found and installed all the programs I needed. My settings were all how I liked them. I knew the keyboard shortcuts. With Linux I didn’t know what would work or what wouldn’t. With Linux, there were a lot of things I’d need to install and set up, and I knew that was going to take some effort. But, worst were the unknown unknowns. I didn’t know what was going to cause me problems, and didn’t know if they were things I could resolve in a couple of hours or if they’d take weeks.
I’m glad I made the switch, and the overall maintenance load is much lower than it was in Windows. The frustration factor is 10x better. But, I did have to make a real effort to make the switch. There were a few weeks where it was pretty frustrating.
I hear you on the unknowns. I just picked up a new direct drive racing wheel, and I spent half the night trying to get it to work. The manufacturer doesn’t support Linux, so I have to use Boxflat. The wheel seems to work in there, but it doesn’t show up in my device list under Game Controllers and Steam doesn’t show it as a controller. However, after more research, it seems like that’s all normal and it’s probably the game itself not detecting the wheel due to it being plugged into a USB hub (which isn’t a Linux issue). Sometimes ime learning the OS is fine, and it’s the software that’s the issue. With Windows, it was easy to assume things were fine on the OS side, and it just comes from that familiarity.
Yeah exactly. I set up Zorin OS for my family who are not tech savvy at all. It was a bit different at first but they said they felt much “calmer” using Linux. Modern Windows feels like trying to read an article online or watch a YouTube video without an ad blocker.
that’s not really true there’s no struggles normally with an OS like Linux Mint.
Selecting a username and password is within most peoples grasp. Click an icon on the dock and you’re away
The struggle is the apps for most people, where’s Chrome? (when FF is right there on the dock), where’s Photoshop etc etc
Linux you fight a bit when setting it up and then its like clockwork. With windows it’s easy to setup, but then it starts doing weird shit you never asked for and and undoes your changes making more work forever.
Linux isn’t hard to set up anymore
Basic install yes, getting all your favourite apps and network connectivity…well, it’s much better than before, but still a short term pain.
No. Network connectivity just works unless you have some really esoteric hardware. I just installed a USB wifi ax 5400, total overkill for my telco router. CachyOS just took it in stride. Most apps, including many Window apps install painlessly. The moment Linux sees an .exe, it launches wine and installs the app.
Right now it’s mostly “just works” most people use office and internet apps anyway.
I had to plug in ethernet to the wifi drivers updated. Map a nas drive with the correct invocation in /etc/fstab. Getting camilladsp to work in multichannel 5.1 setup, getting my fricken nvidia drivers working, getting star citizen to work (still doesn’t), getting roon to work in bottles, adding the right repos even for various software.
Linux has come a long way. It is mostly consumer grade now, but still has some refinement.
I dunno, maybe I’ve just had good luck when it comes to hardware compatibility, but networking has always just worked for me. Along with audio and pretty much everything else.
Getting the apps you want installed is the same thing you’d have to go through with a fresh Windows install too. And I think Linux package management is way easier once you do the initial install. So I would argue that Linux is actually better in that regard.
Yeah, it was way less friction than I was expecting. It went smoother than some windows updates do (specifically the ones where they just reset settings to their shitty defaults).
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I like Mint. Got two boxes. 1 bazzite, one Debian and one Arch for shitz and giggles.
Mint comes in debian, arch and bazzite?
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Uh. No. I have 2 mint boxes. 1 bazzite one debian and one arch… heh.
Mint is wonderful though I am considering switching back to a system with GNOME instead of Cinnamon because the screen reader works better under GNOME.
I am thinking about giving NixOS another shot or at least going with an immutable system, but Mint is a great place to start your Linux journey, and hell, it’s a great place to end your Linux journey if you don’t give a shit about computers and just want the damn thing to work reliably.
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That hasn’t happened for me, but it has shifted from desktop to mobile for me, because, for me, desktop Linux is just about fucking perfect, and I see no need to change it. But, I do very much enjoy playing around with different things like lineage OS, and possibly post-market OS on phones.
I’d say my phone is my primary computing device so it’s what I like to mess with and the laptop is just a system that I need to work whenever I pick it up and therefore it gets Linux installed on it and doesn’t get many changes.
I would say my laptop is more like an appliance similar to my toaster. When I turn on my toaster, I expect it to work. And it’s the same thing with my laptop for the little bit that I need it. And my phone is the device that I mess with, primarily.
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I spent about 2 months on mint with cinnamon, switched to cachy with plasma on my main desktop a few weeks ago and honestly it’s been working a lot better. Still have to poke a few things but overall I’ve got everything I’m regularly using going fine now.
and then its like clockwork
My brother in Christ, what are you talking about? Do you not install any software whatsoever? Do you not have a need to update it? Or maybe all your hardware works out of the box 100% of time? My setup full amd, pretty fresh (am5 + rdna3), but it still a gamble each time I’m launching new game on steam. Will it work out of the box? Will proton-cachyos just bork itself (happened week ago, still not sure what caused it, maybe mangohud)? Will my whole desktop just crash cause of bug in driver that specific to one extension in vulkan? Or maybe I simply won’t be able to see my desktop at all cause amd with LG tv is a bad combination? It’s a shitshow.
Not my experience.
“works on my machine”
Do you not have a need to update it?
It literally does this for you.
It doesn’t, it updates package if you agreed to update. It looks like you misunderstand what I said. I meant that any update can bring issues, it’s not “I installed and it works forever”
I meant that any update can bring issues, it’s not “I installed and it works forever”
I use Bazzite at the moment, and it actually is that. No exaggeration.
And if an update doesn’t work (hasn’t happened to me in the 2 or 3 years I’ve been on Bazzite), ostree means rollbacks are instant and failsafe.
Bazzite also uses topgrade as the backend for its system update utility (just a “ujust” command), and it updates everything including flatpaks and firmware.
So it really is just one click to update everything and it never breaks.
As someone who just installed bazzite today and fucked around with Mint a couple months ago this is very much true. Kinda reminds me of bashing Windows 98 into doing what I wanted.
I installed Bazzite, and I had a bit of trouble!
… Because I pulled out the USB halfway through the install! Like the world’s biggest dumbass! Couldn’t boot the computer at all! Oh no!
Then I stared at what I’d done for a while, sighed, rebooted and started again.
And it was easy as piss. Bazzite 10/10 for me.
You won’t do this on corporate machines, but converting a Win install into an IoT release and generating a key for it is like a couple of clicks and a reboot.
But, but - the way massgrave is still accessible and not fought against makes you think Microsoft wants the fluctuating users to keep on using their products and ecosystem even if they don’t pay the initial sticker price.
So if it’s at least slightly feasible for your workflow, it’s always better to switch and leave M$ behind.
P.S. I can be wrong, but IoT right now doesn’t shield oneself from installing copilot and other garbage, making this edition not better than others, you still need to debloat it.
P.S. I can be wrong, but IoT right now doesn’t shield oneself from installing copilot and other garbage, making this edition not better than others, you still need to debloat it.
a full year in here, with regular security updates. 11iot is still unmolested by microsoft shenanigans. nothing installed on it i didn’t put on myself, or didn’t come with the stripped-down windows, which isn’t much at all. there’s no store, so all the store-delivered shit is absent.
Probably leftovers since I switched to IoT from other ISOs.
Might not be a bad idea to start learning on a separate device though, so you’ll be ready when 2032 hits.
(That’s my current setup)
This is my plan. Going to do my first Linux install on my old laptop to learn and then go full Linux once I feel I’ve got a good idea of what I’m doing.
Can’t risk screwing it up as I’m self employed and need everything to work
Most of us (normal people) are on Windows 11 and happy with it. The majority of those that aren’t are holding out due to the hardware requirements. -Shock to conspiracy theorists.
Thank you MicroSlop Bot 8000. Nice comment
Just dual boot. No need for a separate device.
I’m going to try Steam OS on one of my laptops. See what that’s like.
I don’t think steamos is a great choice for a general purpose OS…yet
Probably not but maybe I’ll be able to play a game. Old laptop. Old Games. New OS. See what happens.
Both bazzite and CachyOS are built for computers and will likely work better for a laptop than SteamOS. And they both have gaming focused builds. I haven’t tried Bazzite in a while, but CachyOS has easy to understand instructions on how to install their gaming package.
I’ve been using Linux since it was a diskette install (Slackware). I’ve used all main Linux flavors over the years, and for the last few years I’ve lived in Mint, because lazy. I’m now on CachyOS. It fucking rocks. Like wow level.
I started with Ubuntu version 10.10 and currently my computer runs Linux Mint Debian 7.
Though I am seriously considering giving NixOS another spin. I gave it a try once, and it didn’t quite work for me, but I think I might try it again. I am getting pretty convinced that immutability is the future because then the operating system developer can work on the operating system and the user space can focus on the user space. And user space applications can’t do things to the operating system that would screw it up and bork it. I’m primarily thinking of when an application gets uninstalled and then uninstalls some shared library that’s needed by another application and fucks it up.
I know immutable systems and self-contained applications require more disk space, but that’s a worthy sacrifice in my opinion. Disk space is pretty damn cheap.
AI says disk space is no longer to be considered cheap ;)
I suggest that you try Bazzite instead. As of now, SteamOS doesn’t support Nvidia.
Oh I’m poor my laptop has AMD.
AMD is better than NVidia anyway
Bazzite also has a better package management system. SteamOS is meant for gaming almost exclusively, whereas Bazzite is meant for both.
After using Bazzite, I’m convinced that image based distros are the future for end users. Need to install an app? Flatpak. Need to install command line? Homebrew.
It all installs in user space. And Flatpak at least uses an effective sandbox system.
Distros that maintain their own package spaces are duplicating a. lot. of work.
The downside of Flatpak is the disk space usage. But that doesn’t matter as much to me as it used to.
Disk space usage isn’t that bad anyway since there’s some deduplication going on.
I can chime in for Bazzite. It’s imperfect, but I’ve blown up my fair share of aliens and they make playing your games on Linux really easy compared to anything else I’ve used. I can even stream the game from my desktop to a laptop in my bedroom via sunshine/moonlight which Bazzite helps you install as SteamLink doesn’t play nice with Bazzite.
Upvote for Bazzite - the caveat being how much support the distro gets and how long it lives. That said it turned a truly piece of crap all in one hp to something that was fun in about 30 minutes. it’s a good gaming OS but I wouldn’t use it as my daily driver.
11 iot is also available, and is void of nearly everything people hate about 11. it’s good to 2035.
I have no intentions of going back to Ravenholm anytime soon.
Regular Windows, with Chris Titus’ decrapifier after install will leave you with a pretty streamlined Windows without the bullshit.
i dunno, going linux feels pretty lazy. just watching you all sweat and panic with your workarounds and here i am like …not.
massgrave can activate 3 years ESU on regular Enterprise for people who want things IoT LTSC is missing, like WMR. I’ve got Enterprise alongside Bazzite and when the updates run out I’ll either switch to IoT LTSC or nuke Windows altogether.
Same, I’ve got a headset on WMR and it’s basically trash if I have to update to Win 11.
You are the champ for pointing people this direction but eventually like Adobe they will close the holes.
Yes, but it is pointless like whack a mole.
I wonder how many “users rejecting Windows 11” are people who refuse to replace perfectly good hardware just because it doesn’t meet Windows 11’s arbitrary requirements.
Especially now in the NANDpocalypse, like no way I’m upgrading my hardware.
It might also be people who want to log in to their computer with a local account, given the problems with letting a US company decide who can use your computer.
Listen, if someone broke into your house they could get into your computer and hack it and see your browsing history and gta6 progress because you dont have TPM 2.0. You dont want that, do you?
Veracrypt/LUKS encryption:
Yeah my 8yr old comp was built to be top of the line at the time and it still rips on non-current AAA games. Any upgrade aside from gpu at this point would mean a new mobo and essentially a wholesale. Fuck that
I’m just broke and not going to be upgrading anything anytime soon. Got an i5 and a 1080. Whenever windows 10 support actually ends, I’ll probably then finally go to Linux, but until then, I’m lazy.
that’s probably most the holdouts left. the absolute brutal persistence of ‘upgrade’ offers and win10 doomsday warnings on eligible hardware got most users to do it, even if they didn’t really want to.
Will upgrade from windows 10 to Linux.
I did it last year after postponing it countless times. And I will recommend you do it. I know it feels like a huge step, but it is much easier than you fear and once you have done it it is such a big relief to be completely free of all of Microslops nonsense forever.
Install alongside. Dual boot. Happily play and try Linux without anxiety.
fuck it man, with the state of desktop linux these days, just put your files on a seperate hard drive and go full hog. Even vanilla ass debian is ok as long as you go for Gnome or KDE.
I haven’t figured out an efficient way to run widows programs on Linux. I know wine exists and the vm’s. Maybe it’s cause I didn’t stick with Linux for more than 2 months.
I was super into Ubuntu when it first came out but I got bored of it really quick. Tried it again a couple years ago and it was still hard to navigate.
Honestly most stuff runs fine on wine, if not wine then proton, if not that then bottles/winboat and some messing around. I’m still going through stuff but everything that hasn’t worked at all has been thanks to external issues such as anticheat. I even got zbrush mostly working the other day.
i think in the past year they must have made ubuntu changes a lot cuz its now really easy like its almost like a smart phone. even upgrades and updates with an interface now. i could see a techphobe who only ever uses iphones use it with ease.
the only hesitation is there is no tech support for linux. like you cant just walk into best buy and expect the geek squad to fix your problems(they could still look into hardware problems)
that said once you learn linux things come pretty easy with a rollback feature(est month maybe 2 to get familiar with the linux tricks on how to fix stuff yourself)
i still work by a cheat sheet. and thankfully the comminity for linux user help is pretty vast for searches
I booted an old win 10 laptop the other day to see if it still worked. It has a GPU so I thought it might be nice for a few light games while I travel. Immediately started screaming about updates and all the normal windows stuff.
I booted to Bazzite from a flash drive and had it installed in like 20 minutes. Runs like a dream now. It’s amazing to see what that old hardware can do without Windows choking it.
It’s so easy now to run an option that doesn’t suck.
so you could have updated a windows machine in 5 minutes, but you have installed bazzite in 20 mins
Generous to say Bazzite installation takes 20 minutes
Even more generous to say a Windows update takes 5 minutes
Generous to say Bazzite installation takes 20 minutes
I’ve installed Kubuntu on several machines and it usually takes about that long, with updates.
I don’t really trust windows updates anymore. Sure it may fix critical security issues, but at the same time they stuff new AI BS in, roll back changes and settings I made (“set edge as default Browser?” and maybe intentionally resets registry settings that I had to make, like disable telemetry and other built in spyware.
Yes, but then they would still be left with Windows
People avoiding updating windows because of how long it takes your machine out of commission for and how opaque the process is has been a meme since like Windows XP. It’s never five minutes. Plus the future hours saved not having to deal with windows bullshit.
Lol 5 minutes. Now you’re just making shit up.
I just set up a brand new windows laptop last night for our run ing club. Refurb straight from Dell. It downloaded updates and installed updates as part of the installation. That was easily 45 minutes. Then it booted up and it had more updates. 2 more reboots and all of those were done. 2.5 hours from unboxing to done (4:27PM to 6:51Pm).
CachyOS install is 15 minutes rounding up and it’s blazing fast.
Eighteen of those minutes were waiting for windows to shut down so they could boot the machine from usb
That is so much bullshit. Any windows update will run you 20+ minutes. My wife had not booted her windows partition for a few months, had to use it because the taxes institution in our country still runs on Excel macros or some shit, and the updates took over an hour and a half and 4 fucking restarts.
For those of you who need a longer offramp to Linux like me and maybe haven’t seen this posted before:
https://massgrave.dev/windows10_eol
You can activate any copy with support at least through 2028.
Came to say this, I’ll add that its is a completely safe and free option.
Benefits over official methods:
- zero cost (don’t pay MS $10)
- no need to format to install LTSC
- no need for a Microsoft account (keep your privacy if you have local only account)
Its FOSS so the entire script can be downloaded and read before you run it if you feel uncomfortable fetching some random script from the web and running it via terminal, as I did.
if you feel uncomfortable fetching some random script from the web and running it via terminal
If you can run some random script in a terminal, you already know everything you need to in order to use Linux.
no need to format to install LTSC
you can modify a text file on an ent/iot installer to allow system and data preserving upgrades on pretty much anything, even ‘home’ or ‘home premium’ editions. i have one here that went 8 pro to 11iot–runs great, and have tested 7hp to 11iot as well. that was the test done before i did the one that ‘mattered’… still using it the test system, too. haven’t bothered to redo it or reload anything else on it yet.
That’s great to hear. I’ve had mixed results with migrating Windows editions in the past, and I believe it’s still an officially unrecommended process due to hiccups that can occur during, and difficulties in diagnosing issues afterwards (can be a bit of a frankenstein as far as libraries WinSXS content, system logs, etc).
Obligatory, here’s your sign to switch to Linux. For people who do nearly everything or everything online it’s a pretty easy switch.
I have absolutely no experience in coding, programming, or anything to do with how Linux works and operates - I was easily able to install CachyOS onto my laptop removing windows completely. Reading comprehension is difficult if one isn’t used to reading wikis, however it’s pretty self explanatory; if a monkey like me can do it, anyone can.
Good shit. Hopefully you backed up anything important before the switch. Generally good to have backups anyway and use the 321 rule to never lose anything. That’s three copies, two different media (hdd & DVD / cloud), and one copy off sight. Although that may be a little excessive for everyone but it will ensure you never lose anything important.
I usually suggest people shop around / distro hop a little. Get a USB, install ventoy, download a few iso’s and try a few different distros on their live boot. There are a lot of different paradigms for a distro, different user interfaces, different kernel compilations, proprietary driver options, audio driver options, package management options and so on.
That said for someone new it is literally just easier to use a more widely used or common distro, usually there’s better wikis and active forums and it’s more likely someone has already had whatever issue you’re having when trying to fix something. I usually suggest Fedora or Linux mint (lmde). Although with flatpaks and immutable OS’s things are getting easier, more copy paste if you will.
Still using Windows 10, but after testing out Linux on the side last year I’ve come to the conclusion it’s ready. Other than anti-cheat being in the shitter once Win 10 is officially dropped for good by games I’m moving over to Arch.
Some anti-cheat software can be run through Steam e.g. Easy anti-cheat.
I’m aware. Just not the majority of them. Either way doesn’t personally matter to me as I mostly play single player games, to which Proton is incredible with that.
and with steam one can play even non-steam games that are “windows only” by adding non-steam game. Proton works for those too.
not for the ones with the stupider anti cheats that cant change just a line of code to work on linux.
i gave up on R 6 long ago. but basically all other games are playable on linux. i become comfortable living by the moral code of ‘if the game doesnt play on linux it doesnt exist’
I’ve been playing The Sims 2 that way lol
Windows decided to delete all my documents and files 2 weeks ago. Even though I removed them from one drive, windows put them all back in. So when their one drive failed. I lost everything. Like every icon on my desktop too. Thank god i had just backed up a couple weeks before so I didn’t lose much.
I was so pissed though that I immediately installed Linux Mint. Haven’t looked back.
Linux only needs to hit a “small but not insignificant size market” for the large publishers to start supporting it. They won’t support it if they lose money doing so, but if it continues to grow eventually they will lose money by not supporting it.
Steam machine should provide another bump, just like steam deck.
And issue is it needs to be a specific platform.
From a game developer’s perspective (who isn’t a pro linux dev or anything), they can support a platform. They support Windows 10. Or Windows 11. They can support stock Ubuntu. They can support a SteamOS image.
They cannot specifically support your personalized Arch config.
Linux’s fragmentation has always been an issue in this regard, as they can’t legally support thousands of different possible system configurations.
HOWEVER,
I think supporting Proton + SteamOS would be very reasonable for a dev. That is a specific platform, its codebase and infrastructure can stay unified with the Windows version, and support for that would practically mean support in other Linux distros.
And SteamOS by itself is getting big.
Install Linux, Problem Solved.
Gat dayum Microslop fucked up.
They fucked up so hard, they still don’t know how bad they fucked up. The done goofed. Done screwed the pooch.
This desperation ain’t nothing. Give it time. It’ll just get tastier.
It’s like XP all over again.
God’s Perfect OS
Windows 11 is synonymous with installing Linux.
I think it’s more that users can’t afford new hardware, even though win11 seems like a step backwards.
There’s also the point that game quality has gone down significantly. If I were to build a new rig which would cost me an arm and a leg, I would still just play games that my current PC can already run anyway. I don’t wanna play the newest CoD-slop or some tech-demo with MTX-shop disguised as a game. The newest games I really enjoyed were Monster Sanctuary (Unity-based monster collector metroidvania-like) and Balatro (no introduction necessary). A toaster can run these.
and Balatro (no introduction necessary)
What’s Balatro?
Slay the Spire but with poker hands instead of medieval-fantasy-combat
Uh oh… Careful, you might lose entire days of your life.
Don’t forget that not everyone uses their Pc for gaming. Most programs really don’t need Windows and since all of the office package can be used through the browser with no real difference in user xp there is no need to upgrade older hardeware that can just stay on Windows 10 or become a Linux system easily.
And my laziness pays off for another year.
Lazyness? You’re not avoiding 11 because you’re lazy, you’re avoiding it because you know what’s best for you
Yep stepping in dog shit isn’t good for anyone. Windows 11 is synonymous with dog shit.
No one likes stepping in dog shit, but it is a natural thing. Windows 11 is NOT natural. And is not a thing you should do-- ever!
I’m avoiding it because I’m lazy. I have multiple laptops with 11 and they’re fine, because I’m not a premadonna like the average Lemmy user.
My PC has windows 10 on it, and some less than legitimate shit, and also some very legitimate shit, and I just don’t want to go through the rigamarole, it’s a pretty janky setup as it is. A ship of thesius, if you will, going back to like 2012.
When I eventually build a completely new PC it’ll be Windows Whatever, because I really don’t give a fuck, it works fine. You could get a post about someone buying replacement windows for their house and you’ll get ten lemmings coming and circle jerking about Linux.
Poor guy will still be using Windows in two years
Do you log into Windows 10 with a local account or an MS account? If it’s local, you’re not getting the updates. If it’s MS, you might be better off not getting the updates.
ohh thank fucking god. I hate windows, but not having a huge portion of the population ready to be infected is a good thing for everyone
There’s never going to be a “Year of the Linux Desktop” where there’s some critical inflection point like a lot of people think. But Microsoft has fucked up here in assuming that consumer trust is a linear relationship and it’s not. They broke the trust, the cracks are there, and users will keep bleeding. They’ll keep a certain percentage of users through apathy or complacency, but the momentum is flowing in reverse now.
What it takes for any one person to cross over is going to look different, whether that’s Linux getting up to speed on a feature they were looking for or Microsoft crossing yet another unacceptable threshold, but despite all my anger and personal grievances aside, I truly believe Microsoft as a company is incapable of correcting this problem.
Their goals are entirely misaligned, they believe they can dictate the market at the consumer and their revenue is dependent on that. They’re bleeding more money and talent through this AI debacle and that’s making them even less capable of facing and addressing the issues. Unfortunately I don’t think they’ll ever fully implode, but just like Chrome eventually ate IE’s market share and now won’t go away, so it will be with Linux.
Bonus points: I’m calling it, I truly do believe that in ~5 years or so Windows will cease to be its own operating system and start shifting towards a Linux distro with a bespoke DE (again, see Chrome/Edge). They don’t want to have to keep maintaining an OS like this and one of the biggest arguments for doing so has been the backwards compatibility, but everything is cloud and SaaS now and they want to push more business customers in that direction anyway. Server will be a thorn in their side for awhile, but consumer facing Windows distro will be the perfect testing ground. Mark it, ~5 years … EEE
Consumers don’t choose OS, manufacturers do.
Depends on the manufacturer and if you purchased in store VS online. Also, every computer purchased online has the specs and if you know what to look for you won’t be taken advantage of by the nerd that looks like they know about computers but really only talks up the most expensive one.
Yes, depends on the manufacturer
And relevant xkcd - https://xkcd.com/2501/
Yeah but the thing is, unless it has to do with governments and anti trust against corporations or national security interests there’s never going to be a major shift to Linux.
France recently changed to Linux on a majority of their government pc’s in an attempt to remove dependence on Microsoft and the US and to maintain national security.
The fact that I switched is telling. I legit liked Windows up until 11 and only used Linux on laptops. Everything really did just work and the OS stayed out of my way, OneDrive+office for my whole family was $80/year, and every piece of software I wanted to use was built for it. I gave 11 a shot. I stuck with it a long time.
Now my desktop runs all FOSS and the only thing I miss is Excel.
LibreOffice Calc?
Pales in comparison, unfortunately. That’s what I’m using now and it feels on par with Office 2007. If you want a specific example…data validation is a bit of a trainwreck. Unless something has changed recently, there is no way to see which cells have data validation applied
But I should note that I’m an excel “power user” and LibreOffice will fit the bill for 99.5% of people.
