Posted by firefoxd 1 day ago
On the Windows side, things started going downhill starting with the Windows XP era, and on the Mac the annoyances began sometime in the mid-2010s.
It seems Microsoft, Apple, and other companies realized that they’re leaving money on the table by not exploiting their platforms. Thus, they’re no longer selling simple tools, but rather they are selling us services.
Yes, there are good Linux distributions that don’t annoy me, and the BSDs never nag me, but the problem with switching to these platforms is that I still need Microsoft Office and other proprietary software tools that are not available outside “Big Tech.” There are other matters that make switching away from Windows and macOS challenging, such as hardware support and laptop battery life.
Meanwhile, my personal machine continues to be Linux.
This is what I'm doing at my work now. I'm lucky enough to have two computers, a desktop PC that runs Linux, and a laptop with Windows 11. I do not use that laptop unless I have to deal with xlsx, pptx or docx files. Life is so much better.
A variation I've done occasionally is to run the Microsoft Windows software in a VM on my Linux laptop.
When I last had the MS office suite inflicted upon me, a couple years ago, I was able to run it in a Web browser on Linux.
It's important to remember, though, that these measures probably won't work long-term.
Historically, MS will tend to shamelessly do whatever underhanded things they can get away with at that point in time. The only exception being when they are playing a long con, in which case they will pretend to play nice, until some threshold of lock-in (or re-lock-in) is achieved, and only then mask-off, with no sense of shame. (It's usually not originating bottom-up from the ICs, and I know some nice people from there, but upper corporate is totally like that, demonstrating it again and again, for decades.)
Also, a company requiring to run Microsoft software is probably also a bad place to work in other regards.
The Windows 10 bait n switch to Windows 11.
Hundreds of millions of PC users worldwide on old hardware using old Windows OSes were offered Win10 as free upgrade, with the promise that Win10 is the final Windows edition.
Later though, M$ announced Win11 and it would work only on new hardware (BIOS TPM 2.0 constraint), and Win10 is no longer being supported for personal use (except via some complicated ways to get an extension for the Win10 updates). And not only is Win11 buggy and full of ads, its performance is also bad.
Well, the good thing is that such shenanigans are pushing PC users to migrate to Linux.
This makes me wonder how much better the world would be if corporations didn't have to answer to shareholders. Valve isn't publicly traded, Microsoft is.
My current employer is so great that I have casually mentioned that I might stay until I retire a bunch of times since joining. I've never said that about any other job. We have Word because there are industry requirements that it meets in terms of formatting legal documents. Can other apps supplant it? Possibly, but no one is spending the time and money to find out and it's not my decision to make.
I understand the motivation of the statement, but it's a fallacy.
Congrats on findind that situation, but I don't think it's evidence of fallacy of my statement.
Yes - I have "noodled" with Linux in VM's and Raspberry Pi's - but it has never been my primary OS.
Thanks to Microsoft, that is about to change...
This seems like an over generalization, though I agree with your other points. Microsoft is not a good company, but are any of the big tech behemoths?
I could buy an argument that requiring Windows for devs might be a red flag, unless said company is making Windows software or games, but there are plenty of valid reasons to standardize on Windows & Microsoft 365 across the office, especially in very large companies. Even if a company issues macs, they are still probably on M365 unless they are in silicon valley or a startup using Google Workspace.
Consumers aren't Microsoft's customer, and to be honest, I get the vibe that Microsoft would just prefer to stop selling to and catering to consumers/personal users entirely for Windows. Windows in an enterprise, properly reined in by a competent IT department, isn't too bad. Windows gives a lot of tools to IT and the business that you would otherwise have to build yourself, which for non-tech company or a company where software isn't their revenue generating product, has a lot of appeal.
The distaste everyone feels for it is because Windows isn't built for the end user anymore, it's built for the person signing the checks at the company, who usually has different needs. Doesn't mean it's a bad product (although, it's not great), just that you, the user, isn't who its designed for.
Microsoft being shitty notwithstanding…I think you don’t really grasp just how prevalent Microsoft is in the business world - it is not the indicator you think it is.
That said, I emphatically despise a lot of the decision making behind Windows and a lot of MS products... I really wish it was managed/governed more by technical influences than business/fincancial ones in practice. You can see where a lot of the lines are drawn and it's a bit fascinating.
Now servers and other backend stuff, on the other hand, linux and illumos.
Despite Microsoft's behavior and all of Windows' flaws, when properly managed and controlled in an enterprise, it's not so bad, and there's still a ton of software out there that is Windows only.
Where I work now is pretty much like that. Windows on end-user endpoints, Linux everywhere else.
Apple used to allow installing a second copy of MacOS without it being subject to the work profile - completely isolated from the work partition (because you could ignore the "set up work profile" prompts after installation).
I would simply restart my MacBook into the personal install after work & on weekends.
Apple have recently updated the MacOS installer to be always online so I can no longer install a seperate MacOS partition without a work profile.
I ended up buying an ROG Ally but it's honestly not that portable. The power brick is almost the same size as the handheld and it occupies about as much space as a laptop in my carry on.
Usually, the iPad apps are "good enough" (in some ways, they are actually better for travel, as they are designed with features like offline downloads), but if they are not a "real" computer is only a tailscale connection to my home network away over VNC.
Edit: specifically, the iPad + Laptop combo never raises an eye at customs houses. Inside the USA, I've taken as many as 3 laptops for a work trip before, and I can not express how much the TSA does not care. On the other hand, when you go through customs in another country, they can be bit ornery (i.e. suspect you of trying to avoid import tax), so I never want to take more than one laptop through a customs barrier.
p.s. if you want to game in your downtime, such trips are an awesome time to break out the emulator and retro game, an iPad has more than enough power for this, and SNES / d-pad type games work great with a keyboard case as a controller (or, you can just bring a real controller).
They can't be used on battery; the discrete GPU will chew through your battery in minutes. They are heavy, loud, hot.
Tried one for a while a long time ago, hated it. I never wanted to bring it anywhere it was so heavy and bulky, so I figured what's the point in having a laptop if I never want to take it with me.
Got a powerful desktop for gaming now, and my portal device is either my iPad or a Macbook air, and I can just remote into my desktop anytime I need.
So it was used primarily like a desktop, and as my only system having power was useful. But the fact that I could put it in my backpack and transport it was super valuable.
Now I do have a more portable laptop and a full desktop setup. But at the time that wasn't the best option.
or not review/understand their required specs,
or both!
I actually ended up buying a travel router and 60% of my gaming was done by remoting into my ROG Ally from my work laptop (they didn't block Steam). The remaining 40% of gaming was done plugged into a TV + controller.
For normal browsing I would use RDP - though it would be amazing if Apple supported some kind of displayport in on the MacBook so it could be used as a screen for an external device.
I've been considering selling my Ally and buying a mini PC with a half decent APU as I seldom use it as a handheld.
My work lap is so locked down I cannot do anything personal on it, so when I go into the office I always carry two laptops, and the personal one is an old thick heavy dinosaur; it’s got to be at least five pounds. However, with a good bag that has a (non-padded) belt and sternum strap, it is not difficult. The belt carries most of the load and my shoulders don’t hurt; they hardly feel anything.
I deliberately park in the farthest spot at the other side of campus (about a half mile, and up four flights in the garage) to get in exercise steps with the heavy pack.
It’s good exercise but I absolutely need a belt and sternum pack to do it. Wouldn’t dream of trying that with only shoulder straps.
Heh - going on 20+ years, my "running joke" is if the only exercise I truly get is lugging my laptop(s) around (sometimes as many as 3, depending on client-load) + "kit" (Kobo eReader, cables, powerbricks (although if it is an ongoing thing, I leave those onsite or rely on docks), powerbank, and various other gear (occasionally an active "gimbal", occasionally an HT radio + it's gear) - then at least one of them might as well be extremely heavy...
Haven't seen many "laptop-focused" backpacks that have both belts and sternum straps, would love any recommendations.
But I hear you. It's annoying that I can't reuse perfectly good hardware, but it's fine - we make do.
As a side note, this is an excellent habit, sadly I noticed people discover that avoiding effort is not always the best strategy when their muscle mass decreases, and adding elements of strength exercise to their daily routine can be more effective than going to the gym, for various reasons.
I can do work on the computer running BSD/Linux, save it in a text-only format, transfer it to the work computer then import into Excel, PowerPoint or Word
It's been over 20 years since I had a home computer running Windows (and well over 30 since I've used a mouse)
I think the GP comment is evidence that Microsoft can get away with what it is doing. Even people who can use Linux or BSD will not stop using Windows at home no matter how obnoxious it becomes
There is a substantial difference between complaining and actually taking action and the company seems to recognise that
But yes, ideally I'd have two machines to separate my career from my personal life.
If you come at it like a sinner asking for penance, the englightened may come to guide, but that's not what I'm talking about. If you to rage, these same people will become inquistors. Rage isn't all about solving a problem, it's about catharsis. It's not so much about technical support, it's about emotional support. A bad design decision (like the GNOME desktop redesign) is not a technical problem. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
There are also people who often claim that their installation of Linux always crashes after every single update, their favourite commodity hardware that's a decade old still doesnt work out of the box on Linux etc etc.
The truth is somewhere in between and its a lot closer to the positive experience these days compared to the old days.
On the one hand, yes, this is not a nice thing to have happen. The frustrations shouldn't happen to begin with, and then people shouldn't be using the reverse Uno card on you just for that.
On the other hand, Linux has a lot fewer of these frustrations (in my experience), and a lot of frustrations are being fixed with time, since you're likely not the only one who is frustrated by it.
On the third hand, the situation being shit for obvious human reasons, not enough dev time, disagreements about the way forward, as is the case with Linux development, is a much, much nicer thing to have your problems caused by, rather than the source of Windows being shit, that is, someone wasn't happy with their dashboard this morning and decided to make that your problem today.
Ubuntu with support is totally a thing, not sure if it is good or not.
Windows 11 Home: $139/license Ubuntu with support: $150/yr
Like Apple used to warrant, it just works.
I raged a lot when my Arch machine would break after an update and I'd have to do config file surgery on a machine that no longer wanted to boot into a graphical desktop. I've never had that sort of thing happen on Mac or Windows.
It's actually surprising just how stable Arch Linux can be considering that it's typically using the newest code for everything. If you really want Arch and stability, maybe using something like SteamOS would be better - Arch, but designed to be stable.
I do like the Arch wiki though - probably the best source of information on Linux tools etc.
"There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now."
I don't know, apathetic bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all.
I used to daily Arch, and I read landers/docs/community pages as a hobby, basically.
I’ve never seen this.
I’m not doubting you, to be clear - I just really want to see it! lol
Link?
e.g.
> NVIDIA 590 driver drops Pascal and lower support; main packages switch to Open Kernel Modules
> 2025-12-20
> With the update to driver version 590, the NVIDIA driver no longer supports Pascal (GTX 10xx) GPUs or older. We will replace the nvidia package with nvidia-open, nvidia-dkms with nvidia-open-dkms, and nvidia-lts with nvidia-lts-open.
> Impact: Updating the NVIDIA packages on systems with Pascal, Maxwell, or older cards will fail to load the driver, which may result in a broken graphical environment.
> Intervention required for Pascal/older users: Users with GTX 10xx series and older cards must switch to the legacy proprietary branch to maintain support:
> Uninstall the official nvidia, nvidia-lts, or nvidia-dkms packages.
> Install nvidia-580xx-dkms from the AUR
> Users with Turing (20xx and GTX 1650 series) and newer GPUs will automatically transition to the open kernel modules on upgrade and require no manual intervention.
Personally, I used to just run an upgrade and then go look for known problems if pacman threw an error. Of course, the recommendation is to have a good backup before running the upgrade and just roll it back if it has issues (then read the notes).
Edit: The warning is shown on the system maintenance page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance
> 3.1 Read before upgrading the system
> Before upgrading, users are expected to visit the Arch Linux home page to check the latest news, or alternatively subscribe to the RSS feed or the arch-announce mailing list. When updates require out-of-the-ordinary user intervention (more than what can be handled simply by following the instructions given by pacman), an appropriate news post will be made.
That's your problem right there. EndeavourOS is also a beginner-friendly Arch derivative but less breaky.
> Wifi to work ootb
I definitely feel you on that one, it's just the luck of the draw sometimes... If you haven't considered it, in some laptops the wifi module is a replacable mPCIe or m2 module and if that's the case, more compatible replacements shouldn't be hard to find for cheap or salvaged from broken laptops.
And meanwhile my Windows and MacOS experience has gotten much worse. So I feel pretty good with using Linux as my daily driver for the past 6 years.
Even Windows 95 came bundled with MSN on the desktop which had a paid monthly fee to access. And its lack of automatic updates was a real problem, as you had to manually find the service packs and security patches. The automatic updates in Windows XP were vastly more convenient.
Automatic updates are needed for security. The only era when you didn't need them was pre-Internet. They're not something we want to get rid of.
That was true right up until companies started routinely pushing updates that broke things, removed useful features, added user hostile features, or even outright ads. If I have to give up automatic security updates to not have my software get worse on me over time, I will gladly do so. I would rather have security updates and not have the user-hostile stuff, but we seem to be unable to get that, so the next best thing would be no automatic updates at all.
Automatic updates arrived in Windows ME.
It's interesting the timeframes on Windows are often earlier than you think they are. Admittedly, a lot of users skipped Windows ME and its strange reputation, so Windows XP may have been their first time seeing automatic updates.
Give me functionality updates, cumulative service packs, and the just after BBS days when an exploit discovered in your software meant it was used by no one, anywhere, because we no longer trust your coding or your 'fix'
Do you not see the constant stream of zero-day exploits coming out for consumer operating systems? Do you think those don't need to be fixed?
I'm genuinely curious -- I've never come across anyone with your perspective before, so I'm struggling to understand where it's coming from.
I live life so that at any moment, if modern services of society (food, internet, power, shelter, entertsinment, transport, personal defense) ended, and I was forced to use what I had access to, that my quality of life would persist. Besides physical considerations (hydroponics, solar, guns, hardened vehicles), I maintain nonvolitile backups of the same software I use daily - vanilla(unpatched) OSs from xp to 11), current and older browsers, non-ssl based content and servers, games, music, movies, hoards of older hardware in a cage that may may an emp.. never tested it. Anything computer related I have works from a bare metal install with no internet connection period.
I use the same retail desktop, laptop, wifi, cellular, and wan hardware used by most consumers but only if I can reset and inialize it offline, and can use the built in firewall to restrict outgoing connections to a single executable single port whitelist including my phone. Which means no nags, no updates, no new features, no removed features, no app stores, no federated os logins, no new terms of service, and no telemetry unless I choose to connect that program to the internet and the program is flexible enough to use a single port.
Zero day exploits won't work on my android 11 s9 with no play services, deny all firewall, and non standard chrome build. In app browser updates don't work until I manually install the binary, most AI features are broken by default even on my win11 laptop.
It's not an easy life. But if you insist that software and hardware do what you wish, your actions should back that. My actions probably more than most. I pass on a decent amount of IT gigs because they require app tracking or that I use their monitoring software, or vpn... but everything I have I KNOW I control now and until it stops working and I buy two more identical and grossly obsolete replacements.
It wasn't until 2001 that the US reached 50% of users having internet access.
Without internet there wasn't really a good way to distribute updates to most users.
As a developer in that era working at a company that made software for PCs and Macs it was great. It meant that the way most users would get our software was buying it on floppy disk (or later CD) from a retail software store like CompUSA or Egghead.
We'd only make more money from someone who bought our software if that software made a good enough impression that they bought more of our software. We'd lose money if any software went out with enough bugs or a confusing enough interface or a poorly enough written manual that a lot of people made a lot of calls to our toll free tech support.
This was great because it largely aligned what developers wanted to do (write a feature complete program with a great UI and no bugs) and what management wanted (happy users who do not call tech support).
With internet giving us the ability to push updates at almost zero cost and as often as we want people who release incomplete programs early and add the missing parts in updates are going to outcompete people who don't release until the program is complete and nearly bug free.
Once you get there it is not much of a leap to decide that what you are really selling is not software to do X but rather the service of providing software to do X. Customers subscribe to that service and you continuously improve its ability to do X.
On the topic of Windows, this is why Microsoft's commitment to backwards compatibility was and is such a huge deal.
It wasn't so easy to just update your software if Windows ever made breaking changes, and your users would, rightly, be pretty ticked off if suddenly what they bought no longer works because they upgraded from Win 95 to 98, or 98 to XP.
You had confidence that you could buy a program once, and it'll just happily continue to run for the foreseeable future.
This also made businesses happy. If you liked a particular version of a software product, you bought it, ran it on Windows, and could rest easy knowing it'll just continue to work through version upgrades of the OS.
I finally moved everything to just Debian itself that never nags me and just works with everything I need, including games (thanks to steam)
Only time I boot a Win10 VM is to compile apps for for windows, otherwise it has zero use or need anymore
And thankfully this was before a time when everyone’s computers and phones had access to their bank accounts, credit cards, and before email was the gateway to virtually your entire life.
If you would review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and start taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
This was from two decades ago, and cursory searching suggests the average lifetime of an unpatched system is even lower now.
https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/study-unpatched-pcs-compro...
Not sure what you guys were trying exactly and what tools you had at your disposal.
I underestimated the economic forces trying to turn them into devices for enforcing the interests of a large company onto the owner and turning the owner into a renter.
[1] - According to minneapolisfed.org, which uses the official economist-approved inflation rates. Not that I'm implying that there's anything wrong with that. I have all of the orthodox beliefs about inflation that a good citizen should have.
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-11-pro/dg7gmgf0d8h...
I assume you used the overall CPI rate rather than the software rate. but using the Software CPI its more like $58. and that seems like an easier sell (for the user, maybe not the developer).
http://data.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/CUUR0000SEEE0...
Software CPI-U
2001 Oct 77.0
2025 Nov 22.182
They never changed.
This is not true except as hyperbole. Most docx open and let themselves edit quite well in LibreOffice Writer, and they look right.
However, you still have a point. There are always some cases when the compatibility is not good, and the only way to use said docx files would be in MS Word.
What LibreOffice misses, and sheets to a lesser extent, is that Excel isn't just a spreadsheet app. It's a general-purpose programming environment for non-devs (although, at a certain point, you could argue they are effectively programming even if they don't see it that way).
Yeah, there are better solutions. At a certain level of complexity, you probably shouldn't be using Excel and should switch to Python+some SQL database, but there's something to be said about the visual environment Excel provides.
Excel is Microsoft's killer app
Google sheets's programmability is way better (than the last time I used) Excel, with direct support for python, which Gemini can write just fine. It's a bit fiddly in places, I'll admit, but Google sheets is definitely a programming environment.
It isn't perfect. You'll probably have a better experience with AMD than Nvidia GPUs, most fingerprint readers probably won't work, and newly released hardware might not have drivers for a few months, but most stuff just works.
Basically anything in a social network needs to learn to defend itself against threats. Make computer a hermit, and it can go without updates for a long time.
(Oh, but you don't like that? Well, Microsoft doesn't like getting in the news for some worldwide botnet of all Windows 10 machines. I bet they'll figure this out sooner or later.)
(God forbid banks be required by law to offer a web connector that allows you to request your own data. A workaround I've tried is to have my bank send me an email alert on every transaction over a penny, so at least I have a record, but never got around to setting up an auto import from my inbox)
Microsoft Office Online works fine on Linux. In fact, it’s superior to native MS Office in terms of stability.
It may work for your case - good. Many companies have custom VBA macros that runs on their Excel sheets to get data or validate it. Try to use a document like this on your online Office and you will understand why most Office users can't easily migrate.
I 'member the days of Win 98, Win ME and Win XP... made good money cleaning up malware - browser toolbars, dialers, god knows what - from computers. Some came from the hellholes that were Java, ActiveX or Flash, some came from browser drive-by exploits served from advertising networks, but others just came from computers that were attached directly to the Internet from their modems.
And I also 'member Windows being prone to crashes, particularly graphics drivers, until Windows 7 revamped the entire driver model.
Oh, and (unrelated) I also 'member websites you could use to root a fair amount of Android and Apple phones.
All of that is gone now, it has gotten so, so much better thanks to a variety of protection mechanisms.
Things get more nuanced when we talk about other types of notifications and about whether updates should be automatic or always require a user’s explicit consent. I personally believe that a key tenet of personal computing is that the owner of the computer, not the hardware or software vendor, should have full control over the hardware and software on the computer. This control is undermined when systems are designed in ways to give users less control. There may be legitimate security benefits to mandatory automatic updates, for example, but there are risks, such as buggy updates leading to broken installations or even lost data, and there’s also having to deal with unwanted UI/UX changes.
As a power user, developer, and researcher, I want control over my computing environment. Unfortunately Windows and macOS have been trending toward more paternalism, more nagging, and more upselling. Thankfully Linux exists, but at the cost of needing to switch away from convenient proprietary software tools like Microsoft Office. I can do without Word or Excel, but PowerPoint is what keeps me on Office (I’ve tried LibreOffice and the Beamer LaTeX template). I’m also concerned about hardware getting increasingly locked down, which will hurt Linux.
It might be easier to swallow the message focusing on Windows 8+ when it really jumped the shark. Windows 7 was a pretty good OS holistically I think even if there are aspects lost compared to the pure simplicity of those really old ones.
The fact there were security concerns is unrelated with the MAIN points discussed not only in the post, but in OP's reply:
> No upselling services
> No automatic updates
> No nagging.
Without auto-updates you could take a guess how many systems wouldn't get patched in months.
The problem is, users are still part of the Internet. And historically, users haven't taken care about update nags, that's how we ended up with giant ass botnets.
The size of the botnets and raw bandwidth they have access to now is staggering. (DDoS, "Residential Proxies", ”Anti-Censorship VPNs”, etc. All just compromised residential devices.
> System 7 and Windows 95
If Windows 95 was the complexity level of a pencil to you, Win 10/11 is merely a color pencil. You should be fine getting rid of the nagging and adapting it to your needs, it hasn't become 10x or 100x more complex, merely incrementally more.
> Microsoft [...] not exploiting their platforms.
That's a phrase I didn't expect. What part of Microsoft do you feel was leaving money on the table, as they were sued by basically the whole globefor their business practices ?
Microsoft is trying to escape this trap by pivoting to Windows as a subscription service. It will get worse, not better.
Not sure Windows as a subscription service is the end goal though. But maybe we should all wish for M$ to do that, maybe that would be what's needed to finally bring about the Year of The Linux Desktop™.
This allows Microsoft to protect parts of their software even from the user that owns the hardware it's running on. With TPM enabled you finally give up the last bit of control you had over the software running on your hardware.
As a bonus, it prevents those pesky Windows API compatibility tools like Wine from working if the application is designed to expect signed and trusted Windows.
People who 5 years ago didn't give a hoot about computing outside of running steam games are now actively discussing their favorite Linux distro and giving advice to friends and family about how to make the jump.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Linux-gaming-growth-SteamOS-sh...
Going back to my Windows install every now and then to do things feels uncomfortable. Almost like I'm sullying myself! The extent of Microsoft's intrusiveness kind of makes it feel like entering a poorly maintained public space...at least compared to my linux install.
I'm not sure that the majority of people feel this way about Windows 11. They just put up with it in the same way as they do YouTube ads, web browsing without ublock origin, social media dark patterns etc. But certainly, never been a better time I think to move to linux for my kind of user, i.e. the only mildly technologically adept.
There are a lot of Steam gamers with 5 games in their library who log on once a month. There are a few Steam gamers with 5000 games in their library who are permanently logged in. There's folks who play one game obsessively, and folks who tinker around with many games.
I'm willing to bet that the 3% are the kind of people who buy a lot of games.
I'd love to see that "what percentage of games have been bought by people on which platform?" metric. I think it'd be a lot more than 3% on Linux, even if you count Steam Deck as a separate platform.
I think SteamOS being available for PC and promoted by Valve could be a game changer. It provides a trusted and familiar pathway for a different way of doing things. But while it would perhaps reduce Windows installs, I can't see it help grow a user base of DIY linux tinkerers, if that is of any importance. I can kind of see it being a bit like Android makes the majority of phone users linux users, but not entirely sure what that means for linux desktop.
I think SteamOS's desktop mode will get used more as people discover it. I was kinda impressed that I could just switch out to a desktop on my Steam Deck, and then used it to play videos while travelling.
The whole "it's better than a console at being a PC, and better than a PC at being a console" thing. It'll be interesting to see if it takes off.
Major tech reviewers are talking about Bazzite. Reddit gaming forums are full of people talking about Win11 vs Linux.
Microsoft only has two strangle holds on PCs - gaming and office apps. For home users they literally have 0 lock in now days other than familiarity. No one is writing native windows apps outside of legacy productivity apps and games. Even Microsoft is writing Windows components in React now days.
I moved to Linux earlier this year and literally none of my apps were unavailable. Everything is a browser window now days.
15 years ago that would've been crazy, I had tons of native windows apps I used every day.
But by saying 'For home users they literally have 0 lock in now days other than familiarity.' I think you severely underestimate how powerful familiarity is in anchoring non-tech users to particular platforms. However dysfunctional they can be.
As I mentioned, I moved to linux myself earlier this year. But the first time I tried it was probably around 2004. And I've dipped in and out occasionally but not stuck with it until this year, when I've found it to be a significant improvement on the Windows alternative.
Microsofts own creation presents a real opportunity for an uptake in linux adoption. But I do think it still presents sufficient friction and unfamiliarity for average non-tech users to take on. The only significant issue I had with your initial comment was with your reference to a 'mass' exodus, even if it is confined to the gaming community.
Happy to be proven wrong of course. And perhaps to the annoyance of my friends, willing to help anyone I know interested with a linux install.
But looking forward to the Dec 2025 steam survey. Looking forward to the tiny contribution my little install will make to the linux numbers!
Give people chrome and most won't be able to tell the difference from Windows.
Windows 11 was a large change to the UI, arguably just as large a change as from Windows 10 to any of the contemporary Linux DEs.
What familiarity? Microsoft has changed the look and feel of the OS to the point that it no longer retains that familiarity from version to version.
There's a demographic of gamers who only play the one competitive multiplayer game (such as Fornite or CoD). They don't buy many games, they're not the most lucrative market for game publishers, but they do keep those titles in business. And yes, for them, anti-cheat is important and they're unlikely to move to Linux.
Being in kernel mode does give the rogue software more power, but the threat model is all wrong. If you're against kernel anti-cheat you should be against all anti-cheat. At the end of the day you have to chose to trust the software author no matter where the code runs.
intel can't even get SGX to work
(But my understanding is there were other things like bumping minimum supported instruction sets that happened to mismatch a few CPUs that support the newer instruction sets but were shipped with chipsets using the older TPM)
For example - it's not possible to protect SSH keys from malware that achieves root without hardware storage. Only hardware storage can offer the "Unplug It" guarantee - that unplugging a compromised machine ends the compromise.
Do new computers have such a button? I've failed to locate it.
The overwhelming majority of users never had any kind of control over the software running on their hardware, because they don’t know (and don’t want to know) how the magical thinking machine works. These people will benefit from a secure subsystem that the OS can entrust with private key material. I absolutely see your point, but this will improve the overall security of most people.
Uninterested is vastly different than unable, especially when that majority is still latently "able" to use some software that a knowledgeable-minority creates to Help Do The Thing.
The corporate goal is to block anyone else from providing users that control if/when the situation becomes intolerable enough for the majority to desire it.
Most people don't move away from their state of residence either, but we should be very concerned if someone floats a law stating that you are not permitted to leave without prior approval.
Do we actually want that?
If Linux ever reached mass adoption, big tech companies would inevitably find a way to ruin it
This big push for Age/ID verification & "trusted" operating systems is going to ruin what's left of free (as in freedom), general purpose computing. Governments are getting frothy at the mouth for every device to have remote attestation like google play protect/whatever iOS does.
Open source drivers, and a sense that Linux support will forever be top priority, would be a motivator for me. Most of my tech spend has been with Valve in the past few years. I'd love if there was another company I actually enjoy giving my money to.
The only computer lineup MS ever sold directly, to my knowledge, were the Surface things - an absolute niche market.
You mean the Microsoft vacuum cleaner ? /s
Which is exactly why MS is pivoting to begging you to buy a new computer by harassing you with an apparently undismissable "upgrade" dialog.
They have to keep the upgrade treadmill running, and lacking "better performance" as the bait, they have resorted to outright harassment.
Both performance and performance-per-watt continue to improve with each new generation of CPUs.
I had to return to Windows as a daily work platform after a long time away (on Macs). I already knew that it had devolved into a grotesquely defective, regressive parade of UI blunders and deleted functionality... but its actual performance is TERRIBLE. I'm waiting for simple operations that I wouldn't have expected to wait for 20 years ago, even on bog-standard office desktop machines.
a 128GB SoC m4 pro max can do pretty wild data science with close to a terabyte/second speed without the latency of typical offloading/back-and-forth
My point being, with time performance might go up. But instead of that making my device faster/long-lasting, developers use that extra performance to cram in more stuff, at the end of which I come out only slightly better if not worse (as is in my case)
An eleven year old computer is still useful, which is kind of cool, but also kind of bothers me in that apparently we haven't made enough progress in software to justify buying new hardware, apparently.
I think the better way is honestly just to make something competitive, preferably FOSS, and I actually do think we're getting there. Blender, for example, is an extremely decent animation tool nowadays, Krita is a very good digital art program, OpenToonz/Tahoma2D are pretty ok 2D animation programs, Godot is a decent-enough game engine, etc.
Yeah there are still gaps and I'm not claiming everything has parity with everything with awful pricing models, but I think we're getting there, and I think that's a more sustainable model than piracy.
Also, even when they are the same, on certain laptops you literally hit the key-rollover problem.
Detached keyboards seem to be more of a wild west, especially when they target multiplatform -- and it's always the stuff they don't document that screws you.
When the Eject key became obsolete, Apple had a perfect opportunity to fix this omission with essentially no effort. NOPE. Meanwhile, everybody else managed to have a proper Delete key on their laptops.
Backspace makes sense if you see the computer as a fancy typewriter.
Delete makes sense if you consider the actions from first principles.
Consider the various forms of deletion (forward, backward, word, file deletion, etc.) Each of these just has a modifier key in Apple's way of thinking. (None, Fn, Option, Cmd) which makes complete sense when viewed against how consistent it is with the whole set of interface design guidelines for Apple software.
The only reason that this doesn't make sense is that it's incompatible with your world view brought from places with different standards. They will never "fix" this as there's just nothing to fix.
Backspace on a typewriter only moved the position (~cursor) back one space. Hence why its symbol is the same as the left arrow key's.
Backwards Delete was a separate additional key, if the typewriter even had one, and its symbol was a cross inside an outlined left-arrow: ⌫. Current Apple keyboard has this symbol on the "Backspace" key in some regions instead of the text "delete", but older ones did have the left arrow.
Apple calling it "Delete" goes back to Apple II. Many other older computer platforms also called it "Delete". DEC used the ⌫ symbol.
Apple also had separate Return and Enter symbols on keyboards for a while, which also sounds like typewriter territory but their intended use was a bit different: https://creativepro.com/a-tale-of-two-enter-keys/
The problem is missing functionality. And hiding it behind unmarked, multi-hand hotkey combinations is neither equivalent nor discoverable.
And delete is a perfectly fine name -- it deletes the character you just typed. I've always thought the supposed distinction between backspace and delete was bizarre. If anything, it's the forward-delete that needs a better term, like... well, forward-delete. Fwd-Del.
It's just deleting. And that's a questionable assertion for which you've provided no support. You seriously think people Backspace old E-mails away? They Backspace unwanted files away? They Backspace selected areas away in Photoshop? OK.
"I find it much easier to just Fn+Backspace"
Except most people don't find that at all, because it's not marked on the keyboard. And again, you're asserting that a secret, two-keyed, two-handed hotkey is easier than pressing a clearly marked button?
If you watch real users when they're faced with the lack of Delete, they use the arrow keys to move the cursor across the characters they want to delete, and then Backspace them away. Twice as much work. Or they reach for the mouse or trackpad and tediously highlight the characters to delete.
And there is no separate function row on Apple laptops. The Eject key was right above the Backspace key... easily reachable.
You're the one who's provided zero evidence that the Del key is used with any appreciable frequency at all. And the fact that Apple doesn't even bother to include one strongly suggests it's rarely used. You're literally the first person I've ever heard even complain about it. Since you've started this topic, if you want evidence from someone else, you really ought to start by providing your own.
> You seriously think people Backspace old E-mails away? They Backspace unwanted files away? They Backspace selected areas away in Photoshop? OK.
Um, yes? If you insist on calling it Backspace, the key that deletes the previous character is also the key that deletes e-mails in Mail.app, that deletes files in Finder (with Cmd), and that deletes the selected area in Photoshop on a Mac. Which is why it also makes sense that it's called Delete on a Mac. It's all extremely consistent and logical.
> Except most people don't find that at all, because it's not marked on the keyboard.
And most people don't need to, because they never want to use it anyways, even when it's a dedicated key wasting spacing on the keyboard.
> And again, you're asserting that a secret, two-keyed, two-handed hotkey is easier than pressing a clearly marked button?
Yes, because the Del position on most PC laptops is awkwardly far away and smaller than Backspace. If you find two hands or two keys difficult, are capital letters with Shift hard for you?
> And there is no separate function row on Apple laptops.
I don't know what that means? Apple laptops certainly have a function row, which is where the Eject button you're talking about has always been. And where the Eject key was is where the TouchID button is now.
> ... easily reachable.
Eject/TouchID is one of the two farthest keys on the keyboard, the polar opposite of "easily reachable". There is literally no position less reachable on the keyboard. It's not ergonomic to make it something used in regular text editing, if you're one of the few people who utilize forward delete.
I never said it was. You're the one who pompously declared the opposite. I merely pointed out an easily-verifiable fact: Apple neglects to provide it.
But since you've exposed yourself to statistics-based ridicule now, I'll lazily rely on Google's so-called "AI"-based indictment of your absurd position:
"Apple's global PC market share generally hovers around 8% to 10%"
This indicates that 90% of the world's computer-using population apparently DOES find Delete to be a compellingly distinct function from Backspace, and sees fit to include a dedicated key for it on its keyboards.
So you can continue to protest and cry about the harmless inclusion of a useful key that doesn't impede YOUR mode of operation at all, while the vast majority of the computer-using world demonstrates its disagreement with you by including it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I don't know what you're bringing up market share for. The idea that most people buy non-Apple because it has a DEL key is not plausible. Like INS, it's a vestigial key maintained mainly for backwards compatibilty with legacy enterprise software used by a tiny minority of businesses. Not for everyday use by normal users.
Now, you started this conversation by complaining about the lack of a DEL key, yet you're the one going on about how I'm continuing to "protest and cry"? Honestly, you might need to look in the mirror there. You're the one asking for a feature almost nobody uses, and all I'm doing is pointing that out. It's much better to respond to disagreement in a productive way by engaging in substance, not defensively by hurling insults.
To reiterate: no, it shouldn't be included on Macs because it's completely and utterly unnecessary. If you need Del functionality, just use the Fn modifier. That's what it's there for. And it's more ergonomic, as established.
2026 seems to just be becoming the "please don't break" era unless I can find some proper work this time. Car is on its last legs, a variety of housing appliances to repair, computer I use professionally. If nothing else, I upgraded my phone this year so that should get me through 2028 at least.
Compile times, game frame rates, computation time for simulations.
- from the C64 to the Pentium
- from the Playstation 1 to the Xbox360
- from the Nokia 3310 to the iPhone 4.
Each of these in roughly a decade.
But 2015-2025 in terms of desktop PCs? Some decent (but not revolutionary) steps forward with GPUs, and much more affordable+speedy SSDs. But everything else has been pretty small and incremental.
And when enthusiasts upgrade, the old parts usually find new homes. My old 6th-gen i7 from a decade ago still has more than enough power for my Dad to use as a home PC for basic photo editing, web browsing, and spreadsheets. But Win10 end-of-life wants to turn that machine into e-waste.
The middle bit is where the disadvantages of the early phase has gone, but the disadvantages of late phase hasn't kicked in yet.
There's a reason as to why people were reluctant to jump on win10. There's a reason people didn't want win8 at all.
I have a brand-new work laptop which absolutely crawls compared to my nearly-15-year-old Thinkpad T430. Is this slowness the Windows 11 advantage? My personal laptop runs plain ordinary Ubuntu 24.04 perfectly, and everything works.
If any, your email client should open any attachment under a sandbox, such as Sandboxie, under a libre license:
https://github.com/sandboxie-plus/Sandboxie
Of course no Office macros would be allowed, ever.
For what it's worth, that machine is being used while I upgrade my 2001 Computer Of Theseus once more. It's now getting it's third motherboard with CPU - this one salvaged from a 2018 or 2019 gaming machine. It's on its second case, and has seen more hard drive and memory upgrades than I can count - all of them piecemeal. Other than perhaps the motherboard screws and hard drive screws, I'm not sure if anything actually purchased in 2001 still survives in there. Maybe the power cable and pc speaker. And I don't remember ever replacing the rear case fan now that I'm looking at it.
Coincidentally I can run it all on a 10 year old PC. I see no reason I need to upgrade. I’d happily pay a small yearly fee for patches.
But that’s not why Microsoft did all of this. Their goal is to Hoover all your data into their cloud and lock your PC down so you can’t do anything but use their stuff. Their profit numbers are insane despite losing marketshare. It’s working because the current CEO is a ruthless non-tech moron.
People want to hate on Microsoft. Rightfully so. Apple has done the same thing. Once you’re locked into the Apple ecosystem it’s hard to switch. They push iCloud and Siri on you at every turn. They just made a “one OS” choice so it doesn’t feel as bad.
Anyone who says Linux solves all the problems has not tried to make something like solidworks and masterCAM run on it. I love Linux, I use it on servers, but it has 3% marketshare for a reason.
Between these and services that suddenly suffer from amnesia and spamming me with marketing notifications and emails after months or years of silence, it’s becoming more tiring to use any service that grows significantly enough where they don’t need to care about what their users actually want.
[ ] don't show this message again
I can offer a slightly different perspective. I remember Microsoft from the 90s and early 2000s. And while technical details differ, their attitude towards users didn't change that much.
With the "requirements" check bypassed, Windows 11 actually runs on the Intel 1st gen Core i-series and newer, as well as any Ryzen CPU and, I think, a couple of earlier AMD generations. (It requires the popcount instruction, which isn't present on the Core 2 and older.)
Anything older gets Windows 10 IoT which gets updates until 2032.
Yay Linux.
Company insisted that I upgrade to Windows 11, I decided Linux was better.
The caveat with this is that it will fail the check on subsequent version upgrades too and will refuse to upgrade.
Non-Enterprise editions are only supported for 2 years so your 25H2 (or whatever it is) installation will go sour in 2027.
Because they want to charge a monthly fee for the profit and share price.
Apple and Android are doing the same thing (using photos backup as the first step to charging monthly).
How-to guide: https://windowsforum.com/threads/how-to-install-windows-11-u...
Alternative options that don't involve any third-party software: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2121461/...
O&O ShutUp10++: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
Firefox: https://www.firefox.com/en-US/
uBlock Origin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...
The silver lining is that my dad's finally getting a new Linux machine for Christmas :^)
Meanwhile Windows has been getting worse and worse. Completely unreasonable and unnecessary hardware requirements, spyware, constantly running antivirus and other processes you don't want, forced updates and reboots, shoving AI down your throat. In other words, you pay money to have a worse experience and less control over your own PC.
I've been ideologically opposed to Windows for a while, but a few years ago Linux required many trade-offs and compromises, to the point I wouldn't have recommended to most people. But now things are completely different and I would happily recommend it to anyone except those who have a hard requirement for MS software (or Adobe).
I wouldn't personally work for them ever. I've only heard bad things about their codebase... and I know people like to complain, but it's usually comedy levels of bad.
Linux FreeBSD NetBSD OpenBSD DragonflyBSD Haiku Plan9 Redox ReactOS Debian Gnu/Hurd FreeDOS Genode SculptOS
And probably some others I haven't heard of. Using Windows in 2025 AND complaining about it is complaining about a self inflicted wound.
I agree with the sentiment though; nowadays Linux has gotten good enough for most stuff, to a point where I don't really see why anyone still runs Windows. If only I could convince my parents of that...
Ask yourself why your parents still use windows and you'll have your response.
I've been using Arch for about two months now. It's been great, yeah, but it's still a massive, long drawn exercise of friction because I have two literal decades of experience using a windows machine. That experience has value and the idea of throwing it away is a barrier.
They don't. They switched over to iPad 10-ish years ago. Most normies I know use phones and/or tablets full-time for their personal computing. Laptops and desktops are either work machines, for games, or for work without wages (studies, excel, other things which are inconvenient or impossible on a phone).
Grandma is on Linux Mint since she still wants to do her banking on a computer and not an iPad. She'd be on Windows 11 if I weren't her tech support, since then she'd have bought whatever idiot at the local shop would have recommended, wasting a lot of money, and probably still have thrown her arms up in despair after a while due to the shit user experience. If the local shop had machines with Mint preinstalled, I'd imagine that would have gone well, if a lot slower than it would have with my help.
No Windows casual out there has ever even installed Windows, never mind another OS, on their computer, even if they theoretically want to. They can't have what they don't know about, and that barrier is probably never going to go away.
Windows is actually terrible for non-technical users now. The constant pop-ups, nagging messages, and decision prompts create genuine anxiety. People don't know what they're clicking on half the time. Yet somehow most technical people I talk to haven't caught on to this.
Look at what younger generations are actually using: Chromebooks in schools, Google Drive instead of Microsoft Office. Even people who legitimately need Office aren't on Windows anymore, they're on Macbooks. That's the case at my company anyway.
At this point Windows is really just gamers, engineers who need CAD, and office workers stuck on it from inertia. There's nothing inherently attracting new users to the platform anymore. I honestly don't know who their primary audience even is at this point.
They're not? They're combining it with Android, which honestly seems like a decent bet for what Chromebooks are meant to be. The end result will have a different name, but it will still be a cheap laptop to do school work and simple computing, and that isn't a Windows machine.
> Also Windows is increasing in its share again.
Is it? And is that pie even getting any bigger?
They're not killing it, they're merging it into Android. Makes sense. Android already does everything ChromeOS does, it just needs better desktop input support. Google said this was to compete with iPads, which only reinforces my point.
> Also Windows is increasing in its share again.
Short-term fluctuations don't change the long-term trend. We're talking about where things are headed over the next decade vs where it once was
> Maybe that is due to companies that want AI in there systems.
My company went all-in on Copilot, but I'm not seeing this translate to more Windows usage. Copilot works fine on Macbooks, and that's what most people here use. When management gets excited about it, they talk about Outlook and Teams integration. Nobody cares about Windows-specific features. What does OS integration even buy you? Access to local files that are already in the cloud anyway? I'm using Copilot on my company-issued Ubuntu laptop right now. And honestly, the fact that IT at a massive, conservative corporation even started offering Ubuntu as an option says a lot about where things are headed.
Microsoft will be fine, but I'd bet on Windows declining over the next 10 years, not growing.
Because if they switch to Linux, I'll be on the hook for tech support. If they stay on windows, then it's mainly my brother's problem.
BTW Windows doesn't seem easy or make much sense to them at all either. Linux wouldn't be any harder for them aside from getting support from random places, or buying random bits of junk with no research expecting them to kinda work.
That's the thing that annoys me. People say Linux is "harder", but I really don't think that's true. People seem to just ignore all the weird awful bullshit in Windows that pops up and accept it as just part of the world, and when Linux has slightly different issues, OMG WHY IS IT SO HARD I'LL STICK WITH MY ADWARE MACHINE BECAUSE I LIKE HAVING UPDATES BREAK EVERYTINGGGG.
I have. They are convinced it will be "harder". I have tried to explain to them what seems a lot harder to me is when Windows Update decides to brick their computer [0], and they have to call me in a panic and I have to waste an entire day walking them through diagnosis stuff and eventually walk them through flashing multiple thumb drives of Linux and Windows 11 [2] and then walk them through nuking and reinstalling.
As I've said before, before I get any kind of "live and let live man if they want to run windows let them", I would like to point out that whenever their computers break, they call me to fix it, so I do not think it's unreasonable for me to want them to use an operating system that has recovery tools that actually work, with and with filesystems built after the neolithic age so that system backups are easy and cheap and actually do what they're supposed to.
[0] dig through my comment history if you details.
[1] made more annoying because, as far as I can tell, none of the Microsoft recovery tools have ever worked in any point in history.
[2] Linux because Microsoft doesn't have any kind of LiveCD/LiveUSB support anymore, so I had to boot into a live Linux so I could walk them through installing tmate and then I was able to mount the drive and rsync all the files over to my server for recovery.
I have just seen this first hand with my significant other: they are very technical and more than capable of it, but have zero interest in learning Linux and instead just bought a MacBook on Black Friday specials when their 5 year old HP laptop finally got too annoying to use.
Also, MacOs is as difficult to learn as Linux is for someone who never used it. Resistance to change exist in all directions.
The thing is, a healthy ecosystem thrives on diversity. Rallying behind one or two tends towards a monoculture.
It's good that there are options, but most people aren't interested in having a dozen decent choices. They want one, solid, good choice, or at least obvious and clear reasons to pick the different options, and they certainly don't have time to try out everything between heaven and earth, especially for something that needs to Just™ Work™.
But 2nd was this: https://www.linux.org/pages/download/
It shows 24 distributions, but no newbie guidance. Maybe a wizard UI would help, vs the open-ended "Explore different Linux distributions and find the one that fits your needs"
Spring for a new hard drive, just in case you hate it with the fires of a thousand suns and need to go back. Then you just swap back to your old hard drive.
I'm eyeing up a shift to apple when my current hardware fails me, but it's impossible for me to just go Linux.
Wine is getting better and better, but it's still not perfect yet. I am so wishing that they figure out a way to get modern MS Office working, and then I feel like a lot of people's only reasons for staying on Windows would suddenly disappear.
I really wish free(libre) tools existed that allowed you to do your work. Hopefully they will in the future, I am sure someone has tried/is trying to build them.
Sounds like we're back to self-inflicted then? If you're self-employed supposedly that software suite was your decision.
I personally wouldn't use it as a serious OS.
Most people don't like doing it, but in order for the operating system to be "good", you really need most of this unsexy stuff to work; you need to be able to easily install WiFi drivers, you need to support most modern video cards, you need to suss out the minutia of the graphics APIs, you need to test every possible edge case in the filesystem, you need to ensure that file associations are consistent, etc.
I've mentioned this before, but this is part of what I respect so much about the Wine project. It's been going on for decades, each release gets a little better, and a lot of that work is almost certainly the thankless boring stuff that is absolutely necessary to get Wine to be "production ready".
I ran Haiku a bit on an old laptop, and I do actually like it. It's ridiculously fast and snappy (even beating Linux in some cases), and I really do wish them the best, but as of right now I don't think it's viable quite yet. I'm not 100% sure how they're going to tackle GPU drivers (since GPU drivers are almost an entire OS in their own right), but I would love to have something FOSS that takes us out of the codified mediocrity of POSIX.
If I had the confidence that I could play a new release on Linux day 1 without trading an enormous amount of performance, I wouldn't need Windows at all.
I run Arch with an Nvidia GPU (which historically had poor Linux support compared to AMD), and I’ve been able to play 100% of the games that I used to play on Windows with no noticeable performance decrease.
There is one significant issue with Dx12 on nvidia, but even that has been root caused and should be fixed next year.
Yes there are alternatives, and possibly even good enough web versions of these tools, but most of the world isn’t like you and me.
I do worry sometimes about fonts. The default Arial replacement should be geometrically idential and thus not lead to issues. TBH I don't know if there are significant rendering issues between LO and MS Office, as I always use PDF. I sometimes upload it to Google Docs to see if it's displayed identically. So far I've never ran into an issue. TBH I think LO is better except for the performance which is okay but not great.
At this point Office programs are commodity. Apple has good options. Google has. And any Linux distro will come with LO. Really a non-issue I think. Even for older people.
To be fair, it probably works. I doubt it's doing anything weird, so Wine should work, given a distro which will just take exes and pass them to Wine. But if it doesn't, TurboTax can't help her, where as they would have been able to help her if it was a true Windows install.
[1] https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/cd-download/insta...
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
"ProductVersion"="Windows 10"
"TargetReleaseVersion"=dword:00000001
"TargetReleaseVersionInfo"="22H2"It may not work on Windows Home, however.
https://gpsearch.azurewebsites.net/Default.aspx?PolicyID=151...