As soon as Win11 became available I knew I'd be switching. I had been contemplating switching but that really sealed the deal for me. I haven't had any trouble with anything if I'm really honest....
As soon as Win11 became available I knew I'd be switching. I had been contemplating switching but that really sealed the deal for me. I haven't had any trouble with anything if I'm really honest. Just give it some time and be patient and things will feel very normal soon after.
There's plenty of Linux flavors to choose from these days, just start with something simple.
Not OP, but my own reasons are the collective sum of UI decisions (like combining the network and volume tray icon) and decades of half-baked implementations (MS seems to think nobody needs more...
Not OP, but my own reasons are the collective sum of UI decisions (like combining the network and volume tray icon) and decades of half-baked implementations (MS seems to think nobody needs more than 2 time zones in the clock) in a paid product (whether indirectly through OEM or having the full retail license).
The rewrite of the taskbar and Start Menu threw out existing functionality like being able to move the taskbar or showing all system tray icons. Then having to add previous functionality back in after release like the clock showing up on multiple monitors, taskbar grouping and a less anemic audio device switcher. In Linux, I can choose to not use GNOME if their UI decisions don't align with my workflow. And I'm more than willing to give KDE's bugginess a pass from the sheer amount of out-of-the-box control you have over the UI that you don't even have to engage with.
Then there's the glacial move to the new Settings menu (which you can only open one instance of at a time) over Control Panel. I'm in the camp of either commit fully to it (so we can collectively hate it sooner) or not at all.
On the subjective side, I just personally cannot stand how sluggish the Windows UI (especially the rewritten Explorer) has become over the years, even on a powerful PC and a fresh install. Years of playing Counter-Strike and having vim as my main text editor made me pretty sensitive to input latency, and "pretty quick" just doesn't cut it when you're used to "near instant". Plasma's UI animation and latency sliders are one of those options I didn't know I needed until now and I have it set up just right, and that's a relatively heavyweight desktop environment by Linux standards.
The most useful settings menus keep getting buried deeper and deeper into UI spaghetti. What required 2 clicks to change now require 4. It's maddening.
The most useful settings menus keep getting buried deeper and deeper into UI spaghetti. What required 2 clicks to change now require 4. It's maddening.
My current laptop, the Lenovo X395 isn't very powerful and while the update did come as free, I happily declined. I had been skeptical of Microsoft's OS' because there's a cadence into wanting to...
My current laptop, the Lenovo X395 isn't very powerful and while the update did come as free, I happily declined. I had been skeptical of Microsoft's OS' because there's a cadence into wanting to bloat things out and there had even already been some speculation about ads being shown and things being cloud-centered.
After some early reviews and comparisons about gaming performance, installation size and added features I was happy to part ways.
For myself, I’m really glad that windows 11 refuses to even be an option if my computer doesn’t support that encryption thingummy. Honestly the number of times that Cortana and Edge just happen to...
For myself, I’m really glad that windows 11 refuses to even be an option if my computer doesn’t support that encryption thingummy. Honestly the number of times that Cortana and Edge just happen to accidentally reinstall themselves if I’m not paying attention to software updates, I’m surprised I haven’t heard of people accidentally automatically upgrading to win11
I think I’m joining a number of people who are happy to leave Microsoft for the next OS. Not sure which Linux distro I’ll go for because I haven’t looked into it yet, but I’m also slightly considering going back to Apple? Maybe? I already use their phone and tablet, and I used to have a MacBook at uni so it’s possibly a bit easier to pick it back up again than learning a whole new OS (even if Linux is leaps and bounds ahead of last time I checked, which was more than a decade ago)
I've made the same decision mostly based on... the taskbar. I want my tasks separate and labeled. Microsoft wants me to guess and click more, like some *shudders* Mac user
I've made the same decision mostly based on... the taskbar. I want my tasks separate and labeled. Microsoft wants me to guess and click more, like some *shudders* Mac user
They actually did just re-add that! Feels like they could've taken the opportunity to update the feature a bit though since they had to rewrite it anyway.
They actually did just re-add that! Feels like they could've taken the opportunity to update the feature a bit though since they had to rewrite it anyway.
Their strategy worked on me in 2008. Since then I run Linux exclusively and never looked back. EDIT: I had hardware problem at the time which Win XP couldn't overcome but Linux did.
Their strategy worked on me in 2008. Since then I run Linux exclusively and never looked back.
EDIT: I had hardware problem at the time which Win XP couldn't overcome but Linux did.
Ubuntu suffered some enshittification a while ago, particularly UI changes that depart from old Windows towards W11/MacOS. I think out of the box Linux Mint Cinnamon is the way to go for a Windows...
Ubuntu suffered some enshittification a while ago, particularly UI changes that depart from old Windows towards W11/MacOS. I think out of the box Linux Mint Cinnamon is the way to go for a Windows user. Many people swear by MX Linux, but I think they're nerds because it requires more tweaking before the experience is sufficiently replicated.
I've been running kubuntu for over a year and haven't had that problem - though that is why I chose the KDE-based edition instead of the Gnome-based regular Ubuntu. I like KDE just fine, looks and...
I've been running kubuntu for over a year and haven't had that problem - though that is why I chose the KDE-based edition instead of the Gnome-based regular Ubuntu. I like KDE just fine, looks and feels like Win7 with better feature design.
I think Ubuntu is still one of the main go-tos for user friendly linux, I did install Mint on a secondary laptop I have and it seems pretty good. The main draw of Mint I believe is for people who...
I think Ubuntu is still one of the main go-tos for user friendly linux, I did install Mint on a secondary laptop I have and it seems pretty good. The main draw of Mint I believe is for people who want a Linux that's as close to Windows as you can reasonably get, while Ubuntu wears its Linux identity more out front. Though I haven't tried Ubuntu in a year or two so I imagine its improved a lot and that both are quite easy to use.
You might want to look into running either one from a USB stick first to compare them, that way you can test out which you prefer without having to change any configurations on your system. Ubuntu gives a guide here on how to do that.
Ubuntu is totally fine, and there are quite a few "flavors" with different desktop environments for you to have some aesthetic choice, or a spinoff like Mint or PopOS. A lot of the people who...
Ubuntu is totally fine, and there are quite a few "flavors" with different desktop environments for you to have some aesthetic choice, or a spinoff like Mint or PopOS. A lot of the people who complain about Ubuntu are really complaining about superficial things they dislike about Gnome, but Gnome's perfectly fine for most users, and if you dislike it there's always other flavors with different desktop environments. I'd definitely recommend an Ubuntu-based distro for someone switching straight from Windows, since they're generally the easiest to get started with and have a lot of troubleshooting info available online.
If you have an Nvidia graphics card, get PopOS. It's by far the most foolproof when it comes to Nvidia drivers and those are what cause 99% of the problems I encountered when I switched to vanilla Ubuntu. It's otherwise mostly the same as Gnome plus some quality of life stuff at the moment, so you can still look up solutions that apply to vanilla Ubuntu and 90% of them will work.
Otherwise, pick based on your DE preferences. Look for what Gnome and KDE and Cinnamon look like and pick what you like best. I personally can't stand Cinnamon's look and find Gnome and KDE roughly equal aesthetically. If you like a very modern aesthetic that's more in the style of Mac OS, Ubuntu Budgie is very good looking in that style while still having the same general functionality as other Ubuntu flavors (though I switched away from it due to the aforementioned graphics driver stuff and the relative difficulty googling for help when troubleshooting desktop environment stuff compared to Gnome).
We pay for much lesser services. That idea honestly wouldn't offend me, but only if it meant removing all the ads, crappyware, and telemetry, and focusing on performance and customer service. When...
We pay for much lesser services. That idea honestly wouldn't offend me, but only if it meant removing all the ads, crappyware, and telemetry, and focusing on performance and customer service. When you remove the shit, Windows is a pretty good OS that is worth paying for.
The issue is that no one expects Microsoft to deliver a truly improved OS. In that case, it would be a terrible deal.
Once companies get into the ad revenue stream, I feel like it is very hard for them to put that genie back in the bottle. Teams are very reluctant to shut off that income and no one wants their...
Once companies get into the ad revenue stream, I feel like it is very hard for them to put that genie back in the bottle. Teams are very reluctant to shut off that income and no one wants their team to get cut as no longer needed. In so many ways ads and tracking are faustian bargains for everyone involved and it's very hard for both consumers and companies to resist that value, unfortunately.
Yeah exactly, they can't help themselves. Why charge money for a subscription service with no ads....when you could charge money for a subscription service with ads?
Yeah exactly, they can't help themselves. Why charge money for a subscription service with no ads....when you could charge money for a subscription service with ads?
I like Windows. A one time fee and then its mine, I'd pay to have things just work. An installment plan if someone needs it, makes sense. But something irks me about all the services that want me...
I like Windows. A one time fee and then its mine, I'd pay to have things just work. An installment plan if someone needs it, makes sense. But something irks me about all the services that want me to pay them just to NOT turn something off. Things that were perfectly fine for years just selling you a real lifetime license suddenly need feel like they're just putting a gun to my head and saying "pay me or I'll pull the trigger". To justify it they provide a bunch of services that cost them nothing and you don't really actually care about.
I can't blame MS for it either though. Apple and Google pioneered this shit. People ate it up.
I'm typing this on a 10 year MacBook Pro. It's running the latest version of MacOS and I haven't paid a cent to Apple for anything on this laptop since buying it, OS or updates. Microsoft has gone...
I'm typing this on a 10 year MacBook Pro. It's running the latest version of MacOS and I haven't paid a cent to Apple for anything on this laptop since buying it, OS or updates. Microsoft has gone through, what, three version of Windows in that timeframe? I have a stack of Windows laptops 6-10 years old that can't run the latest Windows.
I have a ten yer MBP myself gathering dust, and I'd love to see if I can get it running on something newer. Any tips or a guide on the best way to go about this as someone who is normally not...
I have a ten yer MBP myself gathering dust, and I'd love to see if I can get it running on something newer. Any tips or a guide on the best way to go about this as someone who is normally not super mac-savvy?
Huh? I paid one time for my mac and all the updates have been free (until they no longer supported it but I'm still using it fine on the latest os it ever supported). Just curious where you see...
Huh? I paid one time for my mac and all the updates have been free (until they no longer supported it but I'm still using it fine on the latest os it ever supported).
Just curious where you see apple doing this subscription thing to use their hardware?
Agreed... I have never purchased an operating system from Apple. The only recurring cost I have with Apple is Apple One for Music, TV, 200GB of iCloud storage and Arcade. Probably the cheapest...
Agreed... I have never purchased an operating system from Apple. The only recurring cost I have with Apple is Apple One for Music, TV, 200GB of iCloud storage and Arcade. Probably the cheapest subscription I have in terms of quantity and usage.
I don't mind purchasing a license for Windows, that's part of the price of building a PC. I think whatever market research Microsoft is looking at is severely underestimating their leverage in the custom PC market. And I don't think the average consumer wants to buy a laptop and see a monthly fee associated to just keeping it working.
From the standpoint of most businesses, Microsoft has already been a subscription service for over two decades. The old joke about the 'microsoft tax' rings true for a reason. Hate on them all you...
Exemplary
From the standpoint of most businesses, Microsoft has already been a subscription service for over two decades. The old joke about the 'microsoft tax' rings true for a reason. Hate on them all you like, there flatly is no service available in the open source world that can even begin to compare to or fully duplicate a well managed active directory - and the bigger one's corporate network gets, the less adequate *nix solutions become for managing it.
If you intend to manage a hundred thousand employees at eighty locations right down to the apps on their desktops, which machines they can access, and what permissions they have on a thousand databases, apps, and file servers, you're going to be using Windows. That's because microsoft still makes all of that into a simple drag and drop affair for people with a much lower tech skill level than a unix guru. Sorry gurus, you're outnumbered. Even if you do have the best sysadmins, you haven't got anything like a majority, more's the pity.
Anyone who thinks they can get close is fooling themselves, even now with Windows going down the nagware enshittification route. Under the hood Windows has never been better, it's just the UI going downhill in the latest versions. One can easily disable all of that nonsense using the active directory and return it to something much closer to v7 than v11, so it's not even an issue in the corporate world... yet. I'd wager we will see microsoft backpedal on the nagware aspects by v13.
While all the pieces are out there to do it yourself and roll your own enterprise infrastructure, whatever you create to do that job will never, ever be anywhere near as close to as well integrated or as standardized as a microsoft enterprise network. OpenLDAP does not manage SQL server database permissions at the level of tables, or IIS permissions per website... but active directory does - without the need to even set it up to do that. One can pay the microsoft tax, or one can roll one's own - with the difference being that instead of paying microsoft, one can pay for a tech team of *nix wizards and rely on them instead. The money is getting spent either way, but I think one can argue that the wizards are cheaper overall.
What one won't get going that route is the truly gargantuan pool of microsoft certified people one can hire with the reasonable expectation that they can hit the ground running no matter what parts of the microsoft stack one is using. All active directories are fundamentally the same, and that is not true for all linux-based enterprise networks. One can certainly make an argument for the linux way, and I'd agree with it wholeheartedly myself - but the PHBs never will, and they make the decisions. Managers don't go for homebrew solutions, they hate them as a reflex.
Corporations won't generally assume that risk. They will continue to burn tens of millions a year just to have everything and everyone certified with guaranteed service level agreements - despite the fact that when a problem arises, a team of local wizards can solve it far faster and far better than any tech support call no matter how good those contracts are. Corporations don't like to rely on individual employees that way, it wrecks their ability to treat everyone as a rank-and-file easily replaceable number, and tech is known for its fast employee turnover rates and burnout. Microsoft has always catered to that mindset and that is why they are still the big dog when it comes to corporate networks.
Moving to a flat subscription rate is the next logical step and I seriously doubt their corporate consumer base gives a damn about the particulars since they are already used to budgeting a slice of their revenue for microsoft's services every year. Same service, slightly different payment plan, makes no real world difference to them either way.
Microsoft is losing the gaming sphere and the home user market ever so slowly, but they are not losing the corporate world. It would take a concerted push from a major linux player along the lines of what Valve is doing with Proton to begin to make a dent in Microsoft's lock on the corporate sphere. VMWare has some ambitions in that arena with their app-level virtualization suite, and I know some companies that have used it to lessen their reliance on microsoft's tech stack, but not replace it. We are all still stuck with MS Office.
I'm sure there are several itchy fingers out there ready to disagree with this, citing a galaxy of open source alternatives - but can you get your boomer parents to set them up and manage them for over a decade with a few mouse clicks, or will you have to write several pages of documentation just to explain what you built and how to tie everything into it? If it's not a point and click affair ready for the boomer non-tech crowd, it cannot even begin to compete with Microsoft. The second you say 'just open up a command prompt' you lose. Microsoft caters to the stupidest and laziest computer users and that is their core strength.
Wake me up when a linux distro is ready to - through nothing but a simple installer, mouse clicks, and security prompts - seamlessly import my entire existing active directory, step into the myriad domain controller roles, and fool every windows machine on the network while doing it. I think Turnkey is about as close as it gets right now, and they aren't close enough by a long shot... yet samba and openldap have been around almost three decades. Next year is always the year of the linux desktop - it's never this year.
I hate Microsoft as much as the next tech guy, probably more than most, but it is important to remember why they have the dominance they enjoy at present. It is not so easy to brush aside their newbie-friendly tech stack, especially when everyone else is still using it and one has to maintain compatibility. Inertia is the devil, and it's on their side for the forseeable future.
I honestly do not understand how people still seem to think you need to be some kind of tech guru to use Linux. Sure, there are many distros targeting techies but there are many that are...
I honestly do not understand how people still seem to think you need to be some kind of tech guru to use Linux. Sure, there are many distros targeting techies but there are many that are specifically designed to be easy to use. My grandmother used to bug me incessantly with her computer problems with Windows but when I installed Ubuntu on her laptop nearly 15 years ago everything just worked for her and she didn’t have any problems until the computer finally broke down.
But it’s pretty much a moot point to talk about how desktop OSes for laymen these days because most people have switched to phones and tablets anyways.
It's not about the user in the corporate world, it's about the amount of power a single admin at a single console can exert over every other system and user on the network. That power lets one...
It's not about the user in the corporate world, it's about the amount of power a single admin at a single console can exert over every other system and user on the network. That power lets one single admin do more in an afternoon than entire teams could get done in a week before it came along. It's a force multiplier when used well, and it's mature, stable technology with decades of development and real world testing. Many third party programs for windows also support tying into it in some way, so this goes beyond just the microsoft products.
Only microsoft admins who manage hundreds of machines at multiple sites ever really get to see that side of the microsoft stack, and it's the best feature set and value-add on offer in the windows world. The open source tools to do this just aren't as cohesive, so you have to do all of the integration yourself if you go that route, and that means for example loading OpenLDAP plugins into every service (web, database, etc) on every server and tying all of the auth back to it.
Even then microsoft's tools go deeper - there are literally no settings on any microsoft product that can't be remotely managed by the active directory, everything is coded to tie into it by default automatically. Every registry setting is at your fingertips, with hierarchical inheritance from multiple group policies so you can do creative stacking and overriding of settings based on physical server location or project roles or any other ways you want to set it up.
On linux it's a lot of glue to set up something similar - the pieces are out there, but one has to roll it all together themselves, which makes it unique from business to business, not standardized. There are some tools to help automate a linux enterprise like Landscape and Puppet but they are far far far behind where microsoft is, offering only a subset of the management features a windows network has out of the box. I will say that smaller networks do not need this, and the linux stuff can really shine if you are in a smaller business. Forget managing a network like you'd find at Verizon or Paychex with that stuff, though. It's just not mature enough to make that easy yet.
Then there's the issue that everyone is typically trained for and/or used to windows and ms office from school, college, or prior work experience. All of that training is useless in a linux enterprise. Calc is not Excel, in fact it's pretty tepid by comparison, and so are Google sheets. I've seen Excel sheets that I could only call a complete computer program unto themselves - it's more code than numbers. Those don't work on FOSS alternatives.
I get all of that but I was responding specifically to this part of your earlier comment: I'm not contesting your thoughts on enterprise/business IT usage at all. But when talking about...
I get all of that but I was responding specifically to this part of your earlier comment:
I'm sure there are several itchy fingers out there ready to disagree with this, citing a galaxy of open source alternatives - but can you get your boomer parents to set them up and manage them for over a decade with a few mouse clicks, or will you have to write several pages of documentation just to explain what you built and how to tie everything into it? If it's not a point and click affair ready for the boomer non-tech crowd, it cannot even begin to compete with Microsoft. The second you say 'just open up a command prompt' you lose. Microsoft caters to the stupidest and laziest computer users and that is their core strength.
I'm not contesting your thoughts on enterprise/business IT usage at all. But when talking about individuals managing their own computers Linux perfectly fine for most average people. Average people may want to have a spreadsheet program to use, but they rarely if ever need the advanced features you can find in Excel and not in LibreOffice Calc or Google Sheets.
I'd say it is at that. That's where the slow erosion of the home market and gaming sphere is coming from. I'd be surprised if Microsoft lets that go unanswered for very long - they are super...
I'd say it is at that. That's where the slow erosion of the home market and gaming sphere is coming from. I'd be surprised if Microsoft lets that go unanswered for very long - they are super sensitive to competition even today, and they won't want to lose the home user the way they lost big iron in the datacenter if they can avoid it. Sales of Windows are still around ten percent of their revenue stream. Home users specifically are a smaller part of that overall figure. I expect them to give away the home version of windows at some point in the next couple of years. It won't cost them much to do that. Won't do them much good until they walk back the ridiculous changes to the UI, though.
Thanks for the detailed write up. The answer to that will probably be that FOSS architectures and systems will most likely use something like MySQL or PostreSQL and do away with SQL server...
Thanks for the detailed write up.
OpenLDAP does not manage SQL server database permissions at the level of tables, or IIS permissions per website... but active directory does - without the need to even set it up to do that.
The answer to that will probably be that FOSS architectures and systems will most likely use something like MySQL or PostreSQL and do away with SQL server entirely. Having a resource heavy protocol like LDAP is inefficient anyway than a decentralized architecture where devices can be accessed using lower level standard protocols like SSH and SFTP? This may not apply to printers and such but some exception could be made for them?
We are all still stuck with MS Office.
There are alternatives like LibreOffice in FOSS world. Needless to say, integration with everything else will be a major issue but coming up with a tailor made solution that fits your work flow and culture (using a team of wizards as you said!) is probably a better approach than outsourcing the whole thing to a Microsoft or Oracle?
The point is that while all of this is possible - I've seen it done - it is far from simple and those wizards cost double what your average microsoft certified administrator makes. They are much...
The point is that while all of this is possible - I've seen it done - it is far from simple and those wizards cost double what your average microsoft certified administrator makes. They are much harder to replace, and if they didn't document everything you are in deep trouble. There will be more support issues from people who have only ever used windows, like the secretary who trained on microsoft office being completely lost when she opens up Calc instead of Excel. Having open office installed does not mean you can use it to open something that the latest version of MS Office spat out - in fact microsoft goes out of their way to break interoperability on purpose, just to punish anyone not using their software.
Microsoft's latest announcement is baking AI directly in to the operating system and default programs. It just launched, and is coming to your Win11 system in a soon to arrive update if it isn't already installed. Clippy might become useful for a change. Does the FOSS community even have the ability to match that without the cloud resources microsoft is providing with the windows subscription?
I largely agree with you when it comes to the hopeless tone of the comment you replied to, but regarding this: I did switch 100% to Linux and Microsoft Office is pretty much the only thing I miss....
I largely agree with you when it comes to the hopeless tone of the comment you replied to, but regarding this:
There are alternatives like LibreOffice in FOSS world.
I did switch 100% to Linux and Microsoft Office is pretty much the only thing I miss. LibreOffice is perfectly functional but so, so, so much worse than its Microsoft Office equivalents, especially when it comes to Powerpoint and Excel. I don't really use these programs often anymore and only really need them to read documents, so it's a worthwhile tradeoff for me. But if I need to make a slideshow Libre Office is almost worse than using LaTeX for it for me.
That said, there are web apps for Microsoft office, as well as Google's spinoffs. So unless you really need one of these programs a lot, it's still probably not a dealbreaker if you can't stand LibreOffice.
Interesting but I'm not a corporate and many here are seeing this from the POV of individual consumers. We don't need hands-on-deck support from Microsoft engineers and we won't get that in a home...
Interesting but I'm not a corporate and many here are seeing this from the POV of individual consumers. We don't need hands-on-deck support from Microsoft engineers and we won't get that in a home package. So the thought of Windows 12 applying subscriptions to individuals doesn't make sense.
In the perspective of the consumer, They dominate becsuse Microsoft nailed down the manufacturers (and tbh there wasn't much competition. Apple never allowed it to begin with and some very bad 90's/00's PR sunk Linux from being viable to ship to normal consumers). You buy a laptop it 99+% comes with Windows, with the manufacturer either eating the license cost or passing if to the consumer (e.g. If they sell from their website with customizable options). It was just a part of the computer they buy. But if it's not a re-occurring cost to use their computer that will draw ire.
I don't care much about million dollar corporations paying for their cloud support and IT infrastructure if they don't want to build that up themselves from Linux. But I hope this isn't going to poison the well for individuals. It'll work for a while but not forever. It's honestly free real estate for Apple: if you are now considering a 10-20 Dollar subscription (or more!), your cheaper windows option doesn't look as cheap anymore. Chromebook may also rise for those boomer parents who really just need to save pictures, open Netflix, and browse the internet.
I get what you're saying but, agree with you or not, the amount of Windows 10 and 11 problems I've been troubleshooting lately that START with opening Powershell and entering several lines of code...
I get what you're saying but, agree with you or not, the amount of Windows 10 and 11 problems I've been troubleshooting lately that START with opening Powershell and entering several lines of code has begun to be counted on my toes as well.
I remember 3.1 and 95 I had to know my way around the command prompt but somewhere around the Vista - late 8 days I barely ever had something that didn't have a quick GUI fix.
Now I either fight with the dueling settings menus or have to instruct people on Powershell over the phone. At least for my home applications, I have an easier time remoting into the Linux DEs I support for the family.
Makes sense for businesses. Not so much for consumers. Windows 11 has been fine for me and I’m familiar enough with Linux to migrate over when the time comes.
Makes sense for businesses. Not so much for consumers. Windows 11 has been fine for me and I’m familiar enough with Linux to migrate over when the time comes.
I agree with business use of this. I think this is way to try to eat into Amazon's marketshare for virtualized computers on AWS. I doubt that this will become the norm for home users.
I agree with business use of this. I think this is way to try to eat into Amazon's marketshare for virtualized computers on AWS. I doubt that this will become the norm for home users.
The leaked variable names don’t indicated to me that this is necessarily a universal change. Just that some Windows installations will be on a subscription.
The leaked variable names don’t indicated to me that this is necessarily a universal change. Just that some Windows installations will be on a subscription.
I'm very certain it'll just be a windows+ type thing where they bundle windows in with 365 and cloud backup. Microsoft has been transitioning away from caring about Windows licensing income, this...
I'm very certain it'll just be a windows+ type thing where they bundle windows in with 365 and cloud backup. Microsoft has been transitioning away from caring about Windows licensing income, this will just be a small carrot added to those revenue streams.
It'll also take pressure off OEMs since they'll be able to load up windows for free, passing the cost onto the buyer.
I’m skeptical. Paid? Nobody buys paid OSs anymore except “enterprise” companies. Most people I know haven’t even upgraded to Windows 11. Cloud-based? It’s hard to see how Windows 12 could be any...
I’m skeptical.
Paid? Nobody buys paid OSs anymore except “enterprise” companies. Most people I know haven’t even upgraded to Windows 11.
Cloud-based? It’s hard to see how Windows 12 could be any more “cloud-based” than 10 and 11. Most Microsoft apps are already on the cloud, most apps already exist as websites, and features such as files (OneDrive), settings, and even accounts sync.
So what else does “subscription-based OS” mean? Major OSs already receive constant updates and new features.
I can sort of see the thinking if they're looking at how many people didn't pay for the likes of office, or creative suite, before their subscription models
I can sort of see the thinking if they're looking at how many people didn't pay for the likes of office, or creative suite, before their subscription models
In some ways, Steve Ballmer's Microsoft was probably much better than Nadella's Microsoft? More focus on innovation and better software, not trying to squeeze out every penny through subscriptions...
In some ways, Steve Ballmer's Microsoft was probably much better than Nadella's Microsoft? More focus on innovation and better software, not trying to squeeze out every penny through subscriptions for what already exists?
I believe that's just the ongoing enshittification of all products, by all companies. As someone who used to work as Microsoft's external employee about 7 years ago, Azure definitely changed for...
I believe that's just the ongoing enshittification of all products, by all companies.
As someone who used to work as Microsoft's external employee about 7 years ago, Azure definitely changed for the better after Nadella took over.
If they want to extract maximum value from users, subscriptions are the right play. Most consumers think of a product's affordability in relation to their own cash flow. Few have an intuitive...
If they want to extract maximum value from users, subscriptions are the right play.
Most consumers think of a product's affordability in relation to their own cash flow. Few have an intuitive sense of the full cost (or decide to model it out).
I think you're right, I really have no arguments against your opinion, but I don't think it plays out that way long term. Consumers are already feeling the strain of subscriptions leaking into...
I think you're right, I really have no arguments against your opinion, but I don't think it plays out that way long term. Consumers are already feeling the strain of subscriptions leaking into every area of their life, and it wont take a willingness to dig into their finances for the general public to suddenly see how heavy the strain of the permeating existence of subscriptions will become. I feel like all these companies, even the ones who are by no means offering a "Service" that you could bill monthly for, are chasing short term profits for a model that will literally crumble at some point. I say this because the motive for all of them is greater profits for their shareholders, as with all their decisions (Or that vast majority of them). But at some point, the squeeze for profits will destroy the very market it creates, right, if every single company keeps squeezing?
That is my view as well. People have a major resistance to paying subscriptions for hardware. For example, the extreme backlash BMW received for attempting to make their heated seats a...
That is my view as well. People have a major resistance to paying subscriptions for hardware. For example, the extreme backlash BMW received for attempting to make their heated seats a subscription service. They ended up going back on it because people just aren't willing to pay a monthly fee to use a physical thing they already have in their possession.
Operating systems are required for hardware to function. I can't see people willing to pay a monthly fee to use their own computer. Businesses already pay for recurring support packages and probably would put up with it, but if an average consumer has the choice between a $XX or $XXX per year for the privilege of using Windows when they wouldn't have to for a Chromebook, an iPad, or a Mac why would they buy a PC?
As a mac user... I absolutely want to see MS try this and see it become a trainwreck. Course... I'd have to hope that games keep running on my Windows 10 gaming desktop. No fucking way am I paying...
As a mac user... I absolutely want to see MS try this and see it become a trainwreck. Course... I'd have to hope that games keep running on my Windows 10 gaming desktop. No fucking way am I paying money continously for an OS (hell, Apple has me spoiled that once I buy a macbook I just get the updates free until they no longer support the macbook. Hell, the one I"m on now hasn't been supported in 2 or so years <- just found out when I finally caved to updating it and it's still perfectly usable, it's what I'm typing this on now).
if they want to do that, they better be spotting me the hardware to run the OS and give me periodic updates to the hardware too. I better be getting something out of that crappy deal.
It's a tragedy of the commons. When you're one of six subscriptions a person uses, it's a great value; when they're paying for dozens, they're all quick to be dropped. Let's hope piracy replaces...
at some point, the squeeze for profits will destroy the very market it creates, right, if every single company keeps squeezing?
It's a tragedy of the commons. When you're one of six subscriptions a person uses, it's a great value; when they're paying for dozens, they're all quick to be dropped. Let's hope piracy replaces subscriptions as a predominant software distribution model.
Piracy doesn’t work with cloud products like Microsoft Office or AI. I think, only open source can still rescue the technological economy at this point. Or a crash and capitalistic competition,...
Piracy doesn’t work with cloud products like Microsoft Office or AI. I think, only open source can still rescue the technological economy at this point. Or a crash and capitalistic competition, which is a more painful resolution.
All I can say is that I hope you're ultimately right. It does seem unsustainable, but we haven't seen companies switch away from the subscription model yet.
All I can say is that I hope you're ultimately right. It does seem unsustainable, but we haven't seen companies switch away from the subscription model yet.
Luckily I moved all my devices from Microsoft's clutches to various Linux distros. I play a lot of games too and everything I play works, so hey, no problems here. Let MS keep their shit OS.
Luckily I moved all my devices from Microsoft's clutches to various Linux distros. I play a lot of games too and everything I play works, so hey, no problems here. Let MS keep their shit OS.
A ton of games run natively on Linux. Wine was big for getting more to work. And now for anything on steam there's Proton which runs games almost 1-to-1 how they'd run on windows assuming they...
A ton of games run natively on Linux. Wine was big for getting more to work. And now for anything on steam there's Proton which runs games almost 1-to-1 how they'd run on windows assuming they don't have an official Linux release. The only issue I've had gaming on Linux is the nvidia drivers do some questionable stuff sometimes.
Huh, I am behind on the times I guess, I didn't realize all of that had happened. Gaming is the biggest thing I do with my desktop and 90% of that through Steam. And with my latest build I...
Huh, I am behind on the times I guess, I didn't realize all of that had happened.
Gaming is the biggest thing I do with my desktop and 90% of that through Steam. And with my latest build I switched to AMD after all the bullshit Nvidias been pulling lately.
Is there any performance loss in Wine or Proton? I remember back in the day Wine took a lot of config to get working. If MS makes this move I'll definitely be moving off Windows though.
Is there any performance loss in Wine or Proton? I remember back in the day Wine took a lot of config to get working. If MS makes this move I'll definitely be moving off Windows though.
There used to be, but with a couple of new technologies (dirext to vulkan translation), the performance loss is usually <10%, and a few games actually run better on linux through WINE than they do...
There used to be, but with a couple of new technologies (dirext to vulkan translation), the performance loss is usually <10%, and a few games actually run better on linux through WINE than they do on windows.
Thanks to Steam Proton, they work fine now. Can check here for games you like if they run on Linux distros: https://www.protondb.com/ Most games that do not work just have some annoying anticheat....
Thanks to Steam Proton, they work fine now. Can check here for games you like if they run on Linux distros: https://www.protondb.com/
Most games that do not work just have some annoying anticheat. The game itself would work, but the anticheat doesnt.
Between Proton for Linux making gaming available, and Chromebooks and Macbooks eating into Microsoft's lunch, they have to do something. At least they've found a way to really push the casual...
Between Proton for Linux making gaming available, and Chromebooks and Macbooks eating into Microsoft's lunch, they have to do something.
At least they've found a way to really push the casual users out.
Can you elaborate on this a bit? I already dual boot Win11 and a Linux distro, mostly for the purposes of monkeying with other devices. My primary hold-up from going to full Linux is the ability...
Can you elaborate on this a bit? I already dual boot Win11 and a Linux distro, mostly for the purposes of monkeying with other devices. My primary hold-up from going to full Linux is the ability to play games.
I'm familiar with Wine, which is fine for some of the games I would want to run, but for others much less fine. How does Proton figure into this?
Proton is a tool built into Steam to run any game or program you please on Linux (though your mileage will vary based on the game/proton version). Just click the gear icon, go to compatibility...
Proton is a tool built into Steam to run any game or program you please on Linux (though your mileage will vary based on the game/proton version). Just click the gear icon, go to compatibility mode, and select a version of Proton.
I have very few games that won't run on some version of Proton, and I've never exerienced reduced performance. My experience is all or nothing - the game will run just as fine as in windows, or it won't run at all. Others might experience hitches, ofc. Just my experience, never seem to encounter them.
You can run non-Steam games/programs though Proton by adding them to your Steam library.
Yesterday, we published a story detailing the possibility of Microsoft making the next-generation Windows release a subscription-based operating system. ... As it turns out, those assumptions are likely false.
quite frankly it would be a kind of an insane move for them to put a subscription on the consumer side OS at least. Considering how many people are 1) using their phones to do everything nowadays,...
quite frankly it would be a kind of an insane move for them to put a subscription on the consumer side OS at least. Considering how many people are 1) using their phones to do everything nowadays, and 2) able to switch to mac, I doubt Microsoft would do something like this.
The linked article is (understandably) quite vague, but the implications of this are not at all clear. With windows 10, microsoft clearly demonstrated that it understands that it's more important...
The linked article is (understandably) quite vague, but the implications of this are not at all clear. With windows 10, microsoft clearly demonstrated that it understands that it's more important to increase the number of people using its os than to maximise revenue on license keys. That's why it handed out free license keys to people on pirated versions of windows 7, and why it allows you to use the os with basically no restrictions without a license key. The license keys are mostly a racket on oems, not end-users. It would surprise me greatly if it changed its mind about that.
What is this, then? I have no idea, but I would speculate: a network-streamed desktop you can rent, which has close integrations with the rest of the os. That doesn't seems like a particularly bad thing—plenty of other companies already rent out cloud desktops, and I have never heard anybody complain about them. There are some obvious advantages. I wouldn't use it, but I'm clearly not in the target audience considering that I find windows completely unusable in general...
I don't think the core Windows OS is going to be subscription-based. The subscription is likely for AI services. Many software and sites are already offering AI services on a subscription basis...
I don't think the core Windows OS is going to be subscription-based. The subscription is likely for AI services. Many software and sites are already offering AI services on a subscription basis and it makes sense that Microsoft is going that way given how much they've invested in OpenAI.
For the users that don't subscribe, they're likely going to get ads as Microsoft spies on their activity and recommends AI services for whatever task they're doing.
"You have spent 3 hours writing a suicide note, you could have saved 2 hours and 59 minutes by using our latest AI service, SuicideGPT. Start your free trial today and we'll throw in some cyanide pills as a bonus! But wait, order in the next 10 minutes and we'll personally send an AI drone to take you out. Hurry, while supplies last."
I think you are exactly right... mainly because the inbuilt cloud-based AI for Windows 11 just launched about two weeks ago. A subscription service makes a lot more sense if what you are paying...
I think you are exactly right... mainly because the inbuilt cloud-based AI for Windows 11 just launched about two weeks ago. A subscription service makes a lot more sense if what you are paying for is the ability to burn up Microsoft's vast compute cluster resources using various AI tools.
They may end up giving away the OS and just charging a subscription rate or running ads for access to the cloud services. Typically with Microsoft the first versions of something are free until around v4 when it starts to become a useful product. That's when they start charging for it.
That is the future of everything in late stage capitalism. Everything will become a service. The most absurd of all is with cars that have the tech installed, but you can only use if you pay...
That is the future of everything in late stage capitalism.
Everything will become a service. The most absurd of all is with cars that have the tech installed, but you can only use if you pay monthly (warm seats, more horsepower, etc).
It's the nature of the beast. It needs to find more ways to monetize and accumulate more money.
If it would be stripped from ads/tracking, I would even consider it. Its a good OS but the added ads/tracking really puts me off. Right after installing Windows you are already blasted with...
If it would be stripped from ads/tracking, I would even consider it. Its a good OS but the added ads/tracking really puts me off. Right after installing Windows you are already blasted with bookmarks in the start menu, notifications and you feel like every move is logged somewhere..
I have installed Win 10 LTSC and removed tracking altogether. It is a very nice feeling to open up the task manager and only see 35 rudimentary processes running. Where the start menu is just a list of installed apps and the only preinstalled apps are Edge, notepad and a calculator. It's just the barebone OS and that is super cool.
Unfortunately, the good version of the OS is only for certain enterprise customers and unavailable for private people - so I sailed the sea and would do the same for Win 11 once it's out. I would like to give Microsoft money for LTSC but they don't want it :)
I remember this also being speculated in 2014? https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/the-inevitable-arrival-of-subscription-based-windows/ I bet it will be the new Windows norm...
From the update this seems to be just a false alarm, now. Honestly this really is just the logical direction they were going in ever since the release of Windows 10 at minimum. I don't really see...
From the update this seems to be just a false alarm, now.
Honestly this really is just the logical direction they were going in ever since the release of Windows 10 at minimum. I don't really see them flat out gating it behind subscription, that goes against their strategy so far to make it ubiquitous. Something like introducing full on ads and adding subscription to remove them or any number of other strategies on the other hand...
The adoption of Linux on desktops is in low single digit percents, if it reached even low double digit percents the third party incompatibilities would decrease significantly. If it was viewed as a serious alternative(which it is) by a significant minority, Windows would have never went as far in the direction it is heading now.
It's interesting how quickly an unsupported narrative takes hold if it makes people angry. Microsoft announced a while back a plan to start selling Windows VMs in the cloud as a subscription...
It's interesting how quickly an unsupported narrative takes hold if it makes people angry.
Microsoft announced a while back a plan to start selling Windows VMs in the cloud as a subscription service. It sounds to me like this UI is for exactly that. Leading me to wonder why people actually believe Microsoft is going to start charging a monthly fee to keep using your laptop.
They should pay US monthly to use their OS given how much data they collect, which is essentially pure profit for them. Double tipping, triple tipping, n tipping, there's no limit to how many...
They should pay US monthly to use their OS given how much data they collect, which is essentially pure profit for them. Double tipping, triple tipping, n tipping, there's no limit to how many times these extremely greedy corporations are going to extract value from their customers. I'm not even mad at them, but just disappointed that people will actually defend this behavior. Capitalism has brainwashed the masses.
Zero. I used to work for Microsoft and was an engineer who added telemetry to the app my team was making. The concern over privacy was significant amongst the engineers. Everything was...
Zero. I used to work for Microsoft and was an engineer who added telemetry to the app my team was making. The concern over privacy was significant amongst the engineers. Everything was scrutinized, and if some datum wasn't warranted, it wasn't collected. It goes further. Any PII was needed, it was collected in isolation and the user had to actively agree to provide this information. The telemetry itself was pretty useless outside system monitoring. Did the app start up quickly, or did it take too long? In how many sessions did the app crash? What was the call stack when the crash occurred? Every engineer was watching every other engineer because we value our security and privacy as well. It's been that way since the era of STRIDE and writing secure code, and telemetry was always a hot topic of debate. I haven't been at MS for many years now, but I know some of the engineers still there and I don't see this perspective having changed. Compared with what Google is doing with Chrome, it's a night and day difference; Microsoft is talking about selling a service whereas you are the product Google is selling. I do not want to ever become Microsoft's product because that would incentive them to collect the data everyone is convinced they collect already.
Given how good proton has gotten, I would just move to linux fully at that point. I'd have to use windows at work, but thats a work problem, not mine. More likely, microsoft will include a windows...
Given how good proton has gotten, I would just move to linux fully at that point. I'd have to use windows at work, but thats a work problem, not mine.
More likely, microsoft will include a windows license with a Microsoft 365 plan, but still offer standalone licenses.
This anti-cheat stuff tends only to affect big AAA multiplayer games, so depending on someone's gaming preferences it may not matter as much to them that some don't work with Proton. It's...
This anti-cheat stuff tends only to affect big AAA multiplayer games, so depending on someone's gaming preferences it may not matter as much to them that some don't work with Proton. It's ultimately very dependent on the specific user in that case and what games they like to play.
I don't think the cureent anti-cheat issues are likely to spread much further tbh. The types of devs who are likely to use them are pretty much all already using them, with varying levels of support for Linux users. I don't think the Steam deck is likely to affect this negatively -- my hope is that with enough steam deck users these companies will feel more pressure to compromise when it comes to allowing Proton/Linux.
Main problem for me would be game engines. Unity and Unreal editor alike technically support Linux, but you're going to be tripping over a lot more land mines in the process. In the case of...
Main problem for me would be game engines. Unity and Unreal editor alike technically support Linux, but you're going to be tripping over a lot more land mines in the process. In the case of Unreal, just getting the editor running will be a non-trivial task.
I think that would change very quickly depending on Microsoft's rumored actions. Anecdotally, I would completely jump ship to Linux, but I am experienced with it already.
I think that would change very quickly depending on Microsoft's rumored actions. Anecdotally, I would completely jump ship to Linux, but I am experienced with it already.
What's that? Microsoft wants me to move over to a linux distro completely and permanently? Weird marketing strategy, but we'll see how it pans out.
As soon as Win11 became available I knew I'd be switching. I had been contemplating switching but that really sealed the deal for me. I haven't had any trouble with anything if I'm really honest. Just give it some time and be patient and things will feel very normal soon after.
There's plenty of Linux flavors to choose from these days, just start with something simple.
I am on Windows 10 so can I ask why specifically 11 was the reason you switched?
Not OP, but my own reasons are the collective sum of UI decisions (like combining the network and volume tray icon) and decades of half-baked implementations (MS seems to think nobody needs more than 2 time zones in the clock) in a paid product (whether indirectly through OEM or having the full retail license).
The rewrite of the taskbar and Start Menu threw out existing functionality like being able to move the taskbar or showing all system tray icons. Then having to add previous functionality back in after release like the clock showing up on multiple monitors, taskbar grouping and a less anemic audio device switcher. In Linux, I can choose to not use GNOME if their UI decisions don't align with my workflow. And I'm more than willing to give KDE's bugginess a pass from the sheer amount of out-of-the-box control you have over the UI that you don't even have to engage with.
Then there's the glacial move to the new Settings menu (which you can only open one instance of at a time) over Control Panel. I'm in the camp of either commit fully to it (so we can collectively hate it sooner) or not at all.
On the subjective side, I just personally cannot stand how sluggish the Windows UI (especially the rewritten Explorer) has become over the years, even on a powerful PC and a fresh install. Years of playing Counter-Strike and having
vimas my main text editor made me pretty sensitive to input latency, and "pretty quick" just doesn't cut it when you're used to "near instant". Plasma's UI animation and latency sliders are one of those options I didn't know I needed until now and I have it set up just right, and that's a relatively heavyweight desktop environment by Linux standards.You're joking...aren't you? I've yet to use Windows 11 but that sounds shockingly bad even for MS
The most useful settings menus keep getting buried deeper and deeper into UI spaghetti. What required 2 clicks to change now require 4. It's maddening.
My current laptop, the Lenovo X395 isn't very powerful and while the update did come as free, I happily declined. I had been skeptical of Microsoft's OS' because there's a cadence into wanting to bloat things out and there had even already been some speculation about ads being shown and things being cloud-centered.
After some early reviews and comparisons about gaming performance, installation size and added features I was happy to part ways.
For myself, I’m really glad that windows 11 refuses to even be an option if my computer doesn’t support that encryption thingummy. Honestly the number of times that Cortana and Edge just happen to accidentally reinstall themselves if I’m not paying attention to software updates, I’m surprised I haven’t heard of people accidentally automatically upgrading to win11
I think I’m joining a number of people who are happy to leave Microsoft for the next OS. Not sure which Linux distro I’ll go for because I haven’t looked into it yet, but I’m also slightly considering going back to Apple? Maybe? I already use their phone and tablet, and I used to have a MacBook at uni so it’s possibly a bit easier to pick it back up again than learning a whole new OS (even if Linux is leaps and bounds ahead of last time I checked, which was more than a decade ago)
I've made the same decision mostly based on... the taskbar. I want my tasks separate and labeled. Microsoft wants me to guess and click more, like some *shudders* Mac user
They actually did just re-add that! Feels like they could've taken the opportunity to update the feature a bit though since they had to rewrite it anyway.
For a while I really thought that Microsoft would move to become what is essentially a Linux distro with their own WINE built in.
Their strategy worked on me in 2008. Since then I run Linux exclusively and never looked back.
EDIT: I had hardware problem at the time which Win XP couldn't overcome but Linux did.
How is Ubuntu doing these days? Would you suggest that or one of the flavors like Linux Mint to someone who wants to switch today from Windows?
Ubuntu suffered some enshittification a while ago, particularly UI changes that depart from old Windows towards W11/MacOS. I think out of the box Linux Mint Cinnamon is the way to go for a Windows user. Many people swear by MX Linux, but I think
they're nerds becauseit requires more tweaking before the experience is sufficiently replicated.I've been running kubuntu for over a year and haven't had that problem - though that is why I chose the KDE-based edition instead of the Gnome-based regular Ubuntu. I like KDE just fine, looks and feels like Win7 with better feature design.
I think Ubuntu is still one of the main go-tos for user friendly linux, I did install Mint on a secondary laptop I have and it seems pretty good. The main draw of Mint I believe is for people who want a Linux that's as close to Windows as you can reasonably get, while Ubuntu wears its Linux identity more out front. Though I haven't tried Ubuntu in a year or two so I imagine its improved a lot and that both are quite easy to use.
You might want to look into running either one from a USB stick first to compare them, that way you can test out which you prefer without having to change any configurations on your system. Ubuntu gives a guide here on how to do that.
Ubuntu is totally fine, and there are quite a few "flavors" with different desktop environments for you to have some aesthetic choice, or a spinoff like Mint or PopOS. A lot of the people who complain about Ubuntu are really complaining about superficial things they dislike about Gnome, but Gnome's perfectly fine for most users, and if you dislike it there's always other flavors with different desktop environments. I'd definitely recommend an Ubuntu-based distro for someone switching straight from Windows, since they're generally the easiest to get started with and have a lot of troubleshooting info available online.
If you have an Nvidia graphics card, get PopOS. It's by far the most foolproof when it comes to Nvidia drivers and those are what cause 99% of the problems I encountered when I switched to vanilla Ubuntu. It's otherwise mostly the same as Gnome plus some quality of life stuff at the moment, so you can still look up solutions that apply to vanilla Ubuntu and 90% of them will work.
Otherwise, pick based on your DE preferences. Look for what Gnome and KDE and Cinnamon look like and pick what you like best. I personally can't stand Cinnamon's look and find Gnome and KDE roughly equal aesthetically. If you like a very modern aesthetic that's more in the style of Mac OS, Ubuntu Budgie is very good looking in that style while still having the same general functionality as other Ubuntu flavors (though I switched away from it due to the aforementioned graphics driver stuff and the relative difficulty googling for help when troubleshooting desktop environment stuff compared to Gnome).
We pay for much lesser services. That idea honestly wouldn't offend me, but only if it meant removing all the ads, crappyware, and telemetry, and focusing on performance and customer service. When you remove the shit, Windows is a pretty good OS that is worth paying for.
The issue is that no one expects Microsoft to deliver a truly improved OS. In that case, it would be a terrible deal.
Once companies get into the ad revenue stream, I feel like it is very hard for them to put that genie back in the bottle. Teams are very reluctant to shut off that income and no one wants their team to get cut as no longer needed. In so many ways ads and tracking are faustian bargains for everyone involved and it's very hard for both consumers and companies to resist that value, unfortunately.
Yeah exactly, they can't help themselves. Why charge money for a subscription service with no ads....when you could charge money for a subscription service with ads?
I like Windows. A one time fee and then its mine, I'd pay to have things just work. An installment plan if someone needs it, makes sense. But something irks me about all the services that want me to pay them just to NOT turn something off. Things that were perfectly fine for years just selling you a real lifetime license suddenly need feel like they're just putting a gun to my head and saying "pay me or I'll pull the trigger". To justify it they provide a bunch of services that cost them nothing and you don't really actually care about.
I can't blame MS for it either though. Apple and Google pioneered this shit. People ate it up.
Neither of these companies offer an OS as a subscription, nor does anyone else I can think of? Are you thinking of storage and music subscriptions?
None of them even charge for their OS or updates, unlike Microsoft.
I'm typing this on a 10 year MacBook Pro. It's running the latest version of MacOS and I haven't paid a cent to Apple for anything on this laptop since buying it, OS or updates. Microsoft has gone through, what, three version of Windows in that timeframe? I have a stack of Windows laptops 6-10 years old that can't run the latest Windows.
I have a ten yer MBP myself gathering dust, and I'd love to see if I can get it running on something newer. Any tips or a guide on the best way to go about this as someone who is normally not super mac-savvy?
Huh? I paid one time for my mac and all the updates have been free (until they no longer supported it but I'm still using it fine on the latest os it ever supported).
Just curious where you see apple doing this subscription thing to use their hardware?
Agreed... I have never purchased an operating system from Apple. The only recurring cost I have with Apple is Apple One for Music, TV, 200GB of iCloud storage and Arcade. Probably the cheapest subscription I have in terms of quantity and usage.
I don't mind purchasing a license for Windows, that's part of the price of building a PC. I think whatever market research Microsoft is looking at is severely underestimating their leverage in the custom PC market. And I don't think the average consumer wants to buy a laptop and see a monthly fee associated to just keeping it working.
From the standpoint of most businesses, Microsoft has already been a subscription service for over two decades. The old joke about the 'microsoft tax' rings true for a reason. Hate on them all you like, there flatly is no service available in the open source world that can even begin to compare to or fully duplicate a well managed active directory - and the bigger one's corporate network gets, the less adequate *nix solutions become for managing it.
If you intend to manage a hundred thousand employees at eighty locations right down to the apps on their desktops, which machines they can access, and what permissions they have on a thousand databases, apps, and file servers, you're going to be using Windows. That's because microsoft still makes all of that into a simple drag and drop affair for people with a much lower tech skill level than a unix guru. Sorry gurus, you're outnumbered. Even if you do have the best sysadmins, you haven't got anything like a majority, more's the pity.
Anyone who thinks they can get close is fooling themselves, even now with Windows going down the nagware enshittification route. Under the hood Windows has never been better, it's just the UI going downhill in the latest versions. One can easily disable all of that nonsense using the active directory and return it to something much closer to v7 than v11, so it's not even an issue in the corporate world... yet. I'd wager we will see microsoft backpedal on the nagware aspects by v13.
While all the pieces are out there to do it yourself and roll your own enterprise infrastructure, whatever you create to do that job will never, ever be anywhere near as close to as well integrated or as standardized as a microsoft enterprise network. OpenLDAP does not manage SQL server database permissions at the level of tables, or IIS permissions per website... but active directory does - without the need to even set it up to do that. One can pay the microsoft tax, or one can roll one's own - with the difference being that instead of paying microsoft, one can pay for a tech team of *nix wizards and rely on them instead. The money is getting spent either way, but I think one can argue that the wizards are cheaper overall.
What one won't get going that route is the truly gargantuan pool of microsoft certified people one can hire with the reasonable expectation that they can hit the ground running no matter what parts of the microsoft stack one is using. All active directories are fundamentally the same, and that is not true for all linux-based enterprise networks. One can certainly make an argument for the linux way, and I'd agree with it wholeheartedly myself - but the PHBs never will, and they make the decisions. Managers don't go for homebrew solutions, they hate them as a reflex.
Corporations won't generally assume that risk. They will continue to burn tens of millions a year just to have everything and everyone certified with guaranteed service level agreements - despite the fact that when a problem arises, a team of local wizards can solve it far faster and far better than any tech support call no matter how good those contracts are. Corporations don't like to rely on individual employees that way, it wrecks their ability to treat everyone as a rank-and-file easily replaceable number, and tech is known for its fast employee turnover rates and burnout. Microsoft has always catered to that mindset and that is why they are still the big dog when it comes to corporate networks.
Moving to a flat subscription rate is the next logical step and I seriously doubt their corporate consumer base gives a damn about the particulars since they are already used to budgeting a slice of their revenue for microsoft's services every year. Same service, slightly different payment plan, makes no real world difference to them either way.
Microsoft is losing the gaming sphere and the home user market ever so slowly, but they are not losing the corporate world. It would take a concerted push from a major linux player along the lines of what Valve is doing with Proton to begin to make a dent in Microsoft's lock on the corporate sphere. VMWare has some ambitions in that arena with their app-level virtualization suite, and I know some companies that have used it to lessen their reliance on microsoft's tech stack, but not replace it. We are all still stuck with MS Office.
I'm sure there are several itchy fingers out there ready to disagree with this, citing a galaxy of open source alternatives - but can you get your boomer parents to set them up and manage them for over a decade with a few mouse clicks, or will you have to write several pages of documentation just to explain what you built and how to tie everything into it? If it's not a point and click affair ready for the boomer non-tech crowd, it cannot even begin to compete with Microsoft. The second you say 'just open up a command prompt' you lose. Microsoft caters to the stupidest and laziest computer users and that is their core strength.
Wake me up when a linux distro is ready to - through nothing but a simple installer, mouse clicks, and security prompts - seamlessly import my entire existing active directory, step into the myriad domain controller roles, and fool every windows machine on the network while doing it. I think Turnkey is about as close as it gets right now, and they aren't close enough by a long shot... yet samba and openldap have been around almost three decades. Next year is always the year of the linux desktop - it's never this year.
I hate Microsoft as much as the next tech guy, probably more than most, but it is important to remember why they have the dominance they enjoy at present. It is not so easy to brush aside their newbie-friendly tech stack, especially when everyone else is still using it and one has to maintain compatibility. Inertia is the devil, and it's on their side for the forseeable future.
I honestly do not understand how people still seem to think you need to be some kind of tech guru to use Linux. Sure, there are many distros targeting techies but there are many that are specifically designed to be easy to use. My grandmother used to bug me incessantly with her computer problems with Windows but when I installed Ubuntu on her laptop nearly 15 years ago everything just worked for her and she didn’t have any problems until the computer finally broke down.
But it’s pretty much a moot point to talk about how desktop OSes for laymen these days because most people have switched to phones and tablets anyways.
It's not about the user in the corporate world, it's about the amount of power a single admin at a single console can exert over every other system and user on the network. That power lets one single admin do more in an afternoon than entire teams could get done in a week before it came along. It's a force multiplier when used well, and it's mature, stable technology with decades of development and real world testing. Many third party programs for windows also support tying into it in some way, so this goes beyond just the microsoft products.
Only microsoft admins who manage hundreds of machines at multiple sites ever really get to see that side of the microsoft stack, and it's the best feature set and value-add on offer in the windows world. The open source tools to do this just aren't as cohesive, so you have to do all of the integration yourself if you go that route, and that means for example loading OpenLDAP plugins into every service (web, database, etc) on every server and tying all of the auth back to it.
Even then microsoft's tools go deeper - there are literally no settings on any microsoft product that can't be remotely managed by the active directory, everything is coded to tie into it by default automatically. Every registry setting is at your fingertips, with hierarchical inheritance from multiple group policies so you can do creative stacking and overriding of settings based on physical server location or project roles or any other ways you want to set it up.
On linux it's a lot of glue to set up something similar - the pieces are out there, but one has to roll it all together themselves, which makes it unique from business to business, not standardized. There are some tools to help automate a linux enterprise like Landscape and Puppet but they are far far far behind where microsoft is, offering only a subset of the management features a windows network has out of the box. I will say that smaller networks do not need this, and the linux stuff can really shine if you are in a smaller business. Forget managing a network like you'd find at Verizon or Paychex with that stuff, though. It's just not mature enough to make that easy yet.
Then there's the issue that everyone is typically trained for and/or used to windows and ms office from school, college, or prior work experience. All of that training is useless in a linux enterprise. Calc is not Excel, in fact it's pretty tepid by comparison, and so are Google sheets. I've seen Excel sheets that I could only call a complete computer program unto themselves - it's more code than numbers. Those don't work on FOSS alternatives.
I get all of that but I was responding specifically to this part of your earlier comment:
I'm not contesting your thoughts on enterprise/business IT usage at all. But when talking about individuals managing their own computers Linux perfectly fine for most average people. Average people may want to have a spreadsheet program to use, but they rarely if ever need the advanced features you can find in Excel and not in LibreOffice Calc or Google Sheets.
I'd say it is at that. That's where the slow erosion of the home market and gaming sphere is coming from. I'd be surprised if Microsoft lets that go unanswered for very long - they are super sensitive to competition even today, and they won't want to lose the home user the way they lost big iron in the datacenter if they can avoid it. Sales of Windows are still around ten percent of their revenue stream. Home users specifically are a smaller part of that overall figure. I expect them to give away the home version of windows at some point in the next couple of years. It won't cost them much to do that. Won't do them much good until they walk back the ridiculous changes to the UI, though.
Thanks for the detailed write up.
The answer to that will probably be that FOSS architectures and systems will most likely use something like MySQL or PostreSQL and do away with SQL server entirely. Having a resource heavy protocol like LDAP is inefficient anyway than a decentralized architecture where devices can be accessed using lower level standard protocols like SSH and SFTP? This may not apply to printers and such but some exception could be made for them?
There are alternatives like LibreOffice in FOSS world. Needless to say, integration with everything else will be a major issue but coming up with a tailor made solution that fits your work flow and culture (using a team of wizards as you said!) is probably a better approach than outsourcing the whole thing to a Microsoft or Oracle?
The point is that while all of this is possible - I've seen it done - it is far from simple and those wizards cost double what your average microsoft certified administrator makes. They are much harder to replace, and if they didn't document everything you are in deep trouble. There will be more support issues from people who have only ever used windows, like the secretary who trained on microsoft office being completely lost when she opens up Calc instead of Excel. Having open office installed does not mean you can use it to open something that the latest version of MS Office spat out - in fact microsoft goes out of their way to break interoperability on purpose, just to punish anyone not using their software.
Microsoft's latest announcement is baking AI directly in to the operating system and default programs. It just launched, and is coming to your Win11 system in a soon to arrive update if it isn't already installed. Clippy might become useful for a change. Does the FOSS community even have the ability to match that without the cloud resources microsoft is providing with the windows subscription?
I largely agree with you when it comes to the hopeless tone of the comment you replied to, but regarding this:
I did switch 100% to Linux and Microsoft Office is pretty much the only thing I miss. LibreOffice is perfectly functional but so, so, so much worse than its Microsoft Office equivalents, especially when it comes to Powerpoint and Excel. I don't really use these programs often anymore and only really need them to read documents, so it's a worthwhile tradeoff for me. But if I need to make a slideshow Libre Office is almost worse than using LaTeX for it for me.
That said, there are web apps for Microsoft office, as well as Google's spinoffs. So unless you really need one of these programs a lot, it's still probably not a dealbreaker if you can't stand LibreOffice.
Interesting but I'm not a corporate and many here are seeing this from the POV of individual consumers. We don't need hands-on-deck support from Microsoft engineers and we won't get that in a home package. So the thought of Windows 12 applying subscriptions to individuals doesn't make sense.
In the perspective of the consumer, They dominate becsuse Microsoft nailed down the manufacturers (and tbh there wasn't much competition. Apple never allowed it to begin with and some very bad 90's/00's PR sunk Linux from being viable to ship to normal consumers). You buy a laptop it 99+% comes with Windows, with the manufacturer either eating the license cost or passing if to the consumer (e.g. If they sell from their website with customizable options). It was just a part of the computer they buy. But if it's not a re-occurring cost to use their computer that will draw ire.
I don't care much about million dollar corporations paying for their cloud support and IT infrastructure if they don't want to build that up themselves from Linux. But I hope this isn't going to poison the well for individuals. It'll work for a while but not forever. It's honestly free real estate for Apple: if you are now considering a 10-20 Dollar subscription (or more!), your cheaper windows option doesn't look as cheap anymore. Chromebook may also rise for those boomer parents who really just need to save pictures, open Netflix, and browse the internet.
I get what you're saying but, agree with you or not, the amount of Windows 10 and 11 problems I've been troubleshooting lately that START with opening Powershell and entering several lines of code has begun to be counted on my toes as well.
I remember 3.1 and 95 I had to know my way around the command prompt but somewhere around the Vista - late 8 days I barely ever had something that didn't have a quick GUI fix.
Now I either fight with the dueling settings menus or have to instruct people on Powershell over the phone. At least for my home applications, I have an easier time remoting into the Linux DEs I support for the family.
Makes sense for businesses. Not so much for consumers. Windows 11 has been fine for me and I’m familiar enough with Linux to migrate over when the time comes.
I agree with business use of this. I think this is way to try to eat into Amazon's marketshare for virtualized computers on AWS. I doubt that this will become the norm for home users.
The leaked variable names don’t indicated to me that this is necessarily a universal change. Just that some Windows installations will be on a subscription.
I'm very certain it'll just be a windows+ type thing where they bundle windows in with 365 and cloud backup. Microsoft has been transitioning away from caring about Windows licensing income, this will just be a small carrot added to those revenue streams.
It'll also take pressure off OEMs since they'll be able to load up windows for free, passing the cost onto the buyer.
I’m skeptical.
Paid? Nobody buys paid OSs anymore except “enterprise” companies. Most people I know haven’t even upgraded to Windows 11.
Cloud-based? It’s hard to see how Windows 12 could be any more “cloud-based” than 10 and 11. Most Microsoft apps are already on the cloud, most apps already exist as websites, and features such as files (OneDrive), settings, and even accounts sync.
So what else does “subscription-based OS” mean? Major OSs already receive constant updates and new features.
I can sort of see the thinking if they're looking at how many people didn't pay for the likes of office, or creative suite, before their subscription models
In some ways, Steve Ballmer's Microsoft was probably much better than Nadella's Microsoft? More focus on innovation and better software, not trying to squeeze out every penny through subscriptions for what already exists?
I believe that's just the ongoing enshittification of all products, by all companies.
As someone who used to work as Microsoft's external employee about 7 years ago, Azure definitely changed for the better after Nadella took over.
If they want to extract maximum value from users, subscriptions are the right play.
Most consumers think of a product's affordability in relation to their own cash flow. Few have an intuitive sense of the full cost (or decide to model it out).
I think you're right, I really have no arguments against your opinion, but I don't think it plays out that way long term. Consumers are already feeling the strain of subscriptions leaking into every area of their life, and it wont take a willingness to dig into their finances for the general public to suddenly see how heavy the strain of the permeating existence of subscriptions will become. I feel like all these companies, even the ones who are by no means offering a "Service" that you could bill monthly for, are chasing short term profits for a model that will literally crumble at some point. I say this because the motive for all of them is greater profits for their shareholders, as with all their decisions (Or that vast majority of them). But at some point, the squeeze for profits will destroy the very market it creates, right, if every single company keeps squeezing?
That is my view as well. People have a major resistance to paying subscriptions for hardware. For example, the extreme backlash BMW received for attempting to make their heated seats a subscription service. They ended up going back on it because people just aren't willing to pay a monthly fee to use a physical thing they already have in their possession.
Operating systems are required for hardware to function. I can't see people willing to pay a monthly fee to use their own computer. Businesses already pay for recurring support packages and probably would put up with it, but if an average consumer has the choice between a $XX or $XXX per year for the privilege of using Windows when they wouldn't have to for a Chromebook, an iPad, or a Mac why would they buy a PC?
As a mac user... I absolutely want to see MS try this and see it become a trainwreck. Course... I'd have to hope that games keep running on my Windows 10 gaming desktop. No fucking way am I paying money continously for an OS (hell, Apple has me spoiled that once I buy a macbook I just get the updates free until they no longer support the macbook. Hell, the one I"m on now hasn't been supported in 2 or so years <- just found out when I finally caved to updating it and it's still perfectly usable, it's what I'm typing this on now).
if they want to do that, they better be spotting me the hardware to run the OS and give me periodic updates to the hardware too. I better be getting something out of that crappy deal.
It's a tragedy of the commons. When you're one of six subscriptions a person uses, it's a great value; when they're paying for dozens, they're all quick to be dropped. Let's hope piracy replaces subscriptions as a predominant software distribution model.
Piracy doesn’t work with cloud products like Microsoft Office or AI. I think, only open source can still rescue the technological economy at this point. Or a crash and capitalistic competition, which is a more painful resolution.
All I can say is that I hope you're ultimately right. It does seem unsustainable, but we haven't seen companies switch away from the subscription model yet.
Luckily I moved all my devices from Microsoft's clutches to various Linux distros. I play a lot of games too and everything I play works, so hey, no problems here. Let MS keep their shit OS.
I thought most games wouldn't run on Linux, and had to be played on Windows?
A ton of games run natively on Linux. Wine was big for getting more to work. And now for anything on steam there's Proton which runs games almost 1-to-1 how they'd run on windows assuming they don't have an official Linux release. The only issue I've had gaming on Linux is the nvidia drivers do some questionable stuff sometimes.
Huh, I am behind on the times I guess, I didn't realize all of that had happened.
Gaming is the biggest thing I do with my desktop and 90% of that through Steam. And with my latest build I switched to AMD after all the bullshit Nvidias been pulling lately.
It's a good time to dual boot linux and try it out. Just in case. ;)
Is there any performance loss in Wine or Proton? I remember back in the day Wine took a lot of config to get working. If MS makes this move I'll definitely be moving off Windows though.
There used to be, but with a couple of new technologies (dirext to vulkan translation), the performance loss is usually <10%, and a few games actually run better on linux through WINE than they do on windows.
Thanks to Steam Proton, they work fine now. Can check here for games you like if they run on Linux distros: https://www.protondb.com/
Most games that do not work just have some annoying anticheat. The game itself would work, but the anticheat doesnt.
Between Proton for Linux making gaming available, and Chromebooks and Macbooks eating into Microsoft's lunch, they have to do something.
At least they've found a way to really push the casual users out.
Can you elaborate on this a bit? I already dual boot Win11 and a Linux distro, mostly for the purposes of monkeying with other devices. My primary hold-up from going to full Linux is the ability to play games.
I'm familiar with Wine, which is fine for some of the games I would want to run, but for others much less fine. How does Proton figure into this?
https://www.protondb.com/
Proton is a tool built into Steam to run any game or program you please on Linux (though your mileage will vary based on the game/proton version). Just click the gear icon, go to compatibility mode, and select a version of Proton.
I have very few games that won't run on some version of Proton, and I've never exerienced reduced performance. My experience is all or nothing - the game will run just as fine as in windows, or it won't run at all. Others might experience hitches, ofc. Just my experience, never seem to encounter them.
You can run non-Steam games/programs though Proton by adding them to your Steam library.
Neowin: A new report denies rumors of a subscription-based Windows 12
quite frankly it would be a kind of an insane move for them to put a subscription on the consumer side OS at least. Considering how many people are 1) using their phones to do everything nowadays, and 2) able to switch to mac, I doubt Microsoft would do something like this.
The linked article is (understandably) quite vague, but the implications of this are not at all clear. With windows 10, microsoft clearly demonstrated that it understands that it's more important to increase the number of people using its os than to maximise revenue on license keys. That's why it handed out free license keys to people on pirated versions of windows 7, and why it allows you to use the os with basically no restrictions without a license key. The license keys are mostly a racket on oems, not end-users. It would surprise me greatly if it changed its mind about that.
What is this, then? I have no idea, but I would speculate: a network-streamed desktop you can rent, which has close integrations with the rest of the os. That doesn't seems like a particularly bad thing—plenty of other companies already rent out cloud desktops, and I have never heard anybody complain about them. There are some obvious advantages. I wouldn't use it, but I'm clearly not in the target audience considering that I find windows completely unusable in general...
I don't think the core Windows OS is going to be subscription-based. The subscription is likely for AI services. Many software and sites are already offering AI services on a subscription basis and it makes sense that Microsoft is going that way given how much they've invested in OpenAI.
For the users that don't subscribe, they're likely going to get ads as Microsoft spies on their activity and recommends AI services for whatever task they're doing.
"You have spent 3 hours writing a suicide note, you could have saved 2 hours and 59 minutes by using our latest AI service, SuicideGPT. Start your free trial today and we'll throw in some cyanide pills as a bonus! But wait, order in the next 10 minutes and we'll personally send an AI drone to take you out. Hurry, while supplies last."
I think you are exactly right... mainly because the inbuilt cloud-based AI for Windows 11 just launched about two weeks ago. A subscription service makes a lot more sense if what you are paying for is the ability to burn up Microsoft's vast compute cluster resources using various AI tools.
They may end up giving away the OS and just charging a subscription rate or running ads for access to the cloud services. Typically with Microsoft the first versions of something are free until around v4 when it starts to become a useful product. That's when they start charging for it.
They'll do tiered plans with basic functionality being free and then lock tons of stuff behind a paywall.
That is the future of everything in late stage capitalism.
Everything will become a service. The most absurd of all is with cars that have the tech installed, but you can only use if you pay monthly (warm seats, more horsepower, etc).
It's the nature of the beast. It needs to find more ways to monetize and accumulate more money.
If it would be stripped from ads/tracking, I would even consider it. Its a good OS but the added ads/tracking really puts me off. Right after installing Windows you are already blasted with bookmarks in the start menu, notifications and you feel like every move is logged somewhere..
I have installed Win 10 LTSC and removed tracking altogether. It is a very nice feeling to open up the task manager and only see 35 rudimentary processes running. Where the start menu is just a list of installed apps and the only preinstalled apps are Edge, notepad and a calculator. It's just the barebone OS and that is super cool.
Unfortunately, the good version of the OS is only for certain enterprise customers and unavailable for private people - so I sailed the sea and would do the same for Win 11 once it's out. I would like to give Microsoft money for LTSC but they don't want it :)
I remember this also being speculated in 2014?
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/the-inevitable-arrival-of-subscription-based-windows/
I bet it will be the new Windows norm sooner of later, they are already renting out work spaces in the cloud.
From the update this seems to be just a false alarm, now.
Honestly this really is just the logical direction they were going in ever since the release of Windows 10 at minimum. I don't really see them flat out gating it behind subscription, that goes against their strategy so far to make it ubiquitous. Something like introducing full on ads and adding subscription to remove them or any number of other strategies on the other hand...
The adoption of Linux on desktops is in low single digit percents, if it reached even low double digit percents the third party incompatibilities would decrease significantly. If it was viewed as a serious alternative(which it is) by a significant minority, Windows would have never went as far in the direction it is heading now.
It's interesting how quickly an unsupported narrative takes hold if it makes people angry.
Microsoft announced a while back a plan to start selling Windows VMs in the cloud as a subscription service. It sounds to me like this UI is for exactly that. Leading me to wonder why people actually believe Microsoft is going to start charging a monthly fee to keep using your laptop.
This is a perfect place to suggest that you read the novel Year Zero by Rob Reid.
Wow and I still have no desire to upgrade to Windows 11 yet.
They should pay US monthly to use their OS given how much data they collect, which is essentially pure profit for them. Double tipping, triple tipping, n tipping, there's no limit to how many times these extremely greedy corporations are going to extract value from their customers. I'm not even mad at them, but just disappointed that people will actually defend this behavior. Capitalism has brainwashed the masses.
Zero. I used to work for Microsoft and was an engineer who added telemetry to the app my team was making. The concern over privacy was significant amongst the engineers. Everything was scrutinized, and if some datum wasn't warranted, it wasn't collected. It goes further. Any PII was needed, it was collected in isolation and the user had to actively agree to provide this information. The telemetry itself was pretty useless outside system monitoring. Did the app start up quickly, or did it take too long? In how many sessions did the app crash? What was the call stack when the crash occurred? Every engineer was watching every other engineer because we value our security and privacy as well. It's been that way since the era of STRIDE and writing secure code, and telemetry was always a hot topic of debate. I haven't been at MS for many years now, but I know some of the engineers still there and I don't see this perspective having changed. Compared with what Google is doing with Chrome, it's a night and day difference; Microsoft is talking about selling a service whereas you are the product Google is selling. I do not want to ever become Microsoft's product because that would incentive them to collect the data everyone is convinced they collect already.
Given how good proton has gotten, I would just move to linux fully at that point. I'd have to use windows at work, but thats a work problem, not mine.
More likely, microsoft will include a windows license with a Microsoft 365 plan, but still offer standalone licenses.
This anti-cheat stuff tends only to affect big AAA multiplayer games, so depending on someone's gaming preferences it may not matter as much to them that some don't work with Proton. It's ultimately very dependent on the specific user in that case and what games they like to play.
I don't think the cureent anti-cheat issues are likely to spread much further tbh. The types of devs who are likely to use them are pretty much all already using them, with varying levels of support for Linux users. I don't think the Steam deck is likely to affect this negatively -- my hope is that with enough steam deck users these companies will feel more pressure to compromise when it comes to allowing Proton/Linux.
Main problem for me would be game engines. Unity and Unreal editor alike technically support Linux, but you're going to be tripping over a lot more land mines in the process. In the case of Unreal, just getting the editor running will be a non-trivial task.
I think that would change very quickly depending on Microsoft's rumored actions. Anecdotally, I would completely jump ship to Linux, but I am experienced with it already.