I swear, Microsoft YEARNS to fail. Dunno who is running the show over there but they’re doing a great job of being terrible for their brand.
They are seriously making the case for Linux with everything they do
Windows 10 had already done a great job of that, but Windows 11 has really amped it up. I only have a single Windows machine in the house at this point for specific corporate stuff I need for work.
Of course they are. Coincidentally, newer devices being bought in 2025 are increasingly shipping with fully locked UEFI that prevents you from installing anything but Windows.
I thought that was illegal.
Do you happen to know any specific hardware that does so? I haven’t heard of that and I’m genuinely curious.
Maybe Windows ARM devices?
You can run Linux on those, except for the surface pro X which never got support
Advertising has no place in an operating system. Full stop.
Advertising has no place period.
One of the single greatest tragedies of modern life is that we accepted ads invading our personal and public spaces. Going outside for a walk and having to see a large outdoor, literally an advert on the sky, should be a crime against humanity.
I moved somewhere where signs over a certain height (maybe 8 feet?) are illegal.
It’s glorious
Especially one you have to PAY for
Just an fyi - Windows 11 is free for all that most users need. You don’t need to activate Windows to use it unless you want to use a few of the more advanced features. It never locks you out or anything, you just can’t change your desktop wallpaper.
So glad I completely gave up on MS after Windows 7.
“Microsoft testing new ways to lose customers”.
It’s well known that piracy was what made Word (.DOC) and Excel (.XLS) the de facto standard.
If the kids at home can’t use windows, they’ll find something different. And when enough of them find if, when they become decision makers they’ll stay away from Windows.
Imagine how different the landscape would be had MS cracked down on Piracy for their flagship programs.
iMacs in schools weren’t for nothing, and neither are the weirdly good deals on Apple products for students and teachers. At a time when people are learning about these programs and using the machines pretty aggressively the good product company comes along and gives them affordable-ish equipment with a nice stable OS.
Tim Cook Apple being kinda underwhelming and being way more expensive than Steve Jobs Apple is not helping their image but they still have decent deals and are able to ride said image for a very long time thanks largely to Jobs understanding what you’re talking about.
Back to Microsoft, they don’t seem to understand that the general consensus on them has mostly always been that Windows is cheap and not amazing but certain programs run on only it. Now they want to make it cost a tonne of money/have ads? Jobs’ Apple products where expensive but they were high quality. Microsoft just can’t pull the same shit with their dogshit legacy-coded 30 year old hack-job OS and consistently mediocre-to-bad products. And they have to do it while competing with Linux amongst the very people who were doing most of the loud fan-boying for their shit for so long!
If the kids at home can’t use windows
Wait why can’t they use windows?
Complete clickbait article headline: the title should have been “for subscriptions where the payment method for the renewal failed”, not just for “expired subscriptions”. It’s to notify people who didn’t mean for their subscription to lapse that their payment method was refused.
Doesn’t make as “good” of a story then though, does it?
I’m in a constant battle to keep it removed off our office machines. You can’t remove it completely since its cached and installed with every user login. In order to get rid of it we would have to pay for the enterprise version. Just another rip off from macroshit.
Will they run in WINE?
Tricky. Microsoft currently use two different executable formats and only one of them is compatible with WINE. That still doesn’t mean that a compatible one will work properly though.
On the other hand, people who make ads want their ads to be literally everywhere, so they might make it Windows 3.11 compatible with all library functions baked in just to be safe. WINE would almost certainly run that.
dont think so
Luckily at work we are allowed to install a dual boot, or even single boot with Linux. The one obligation is to run the corporate antivirus and vpn client (and yes we had malware detections of Linux binaries).
Dual booting for the last 6 months, now 100% on Linux (Mint). Can’t say I miss anything from windows, maybe ms office’s polished apps but I can’t care less. Nowadays everything runs in the browser, it has become « the OS ». And almost every browser is a chromium variant that’s it.
Malware for Linux exists, and has for a long time. It’s just not as omnipresent as windows malware, even adjusting for market share.
Also, often has different goals to windows malware
Yes they were mostly xmr miners, or reverse shell (pretty much like all those windows RAT)
Laughs in Linux
I hope it last, web enshitification may bring us back to the 2000s where that one site requires internet explorer, this one won’t allow DRM content on non windows platforms…
It’s just around the corner.
Also Microsoft: “Why aren’t people upgrading to Windows 11?”
From Fedora 42? Sounds like a downgrade.
This is so funny. My wife purchased a Yealink headset for work, and her laptop runs W11. When we got the headset I tried it on my Fedora 42 laptop and had a meeting for about 30 minutes, only because I wanted to see if it would run on Linux. Of course, nor only did it work, it was plug & play, and was spectacular in sound quality and mic noise cancelation.
So I set it up on her W laptop, and here comes the “download this”, “install drivers” and “install apps” bullshit that I had all but forgotten about since I made the leap to Linux over 8 years ago. All this only to have it regularly disconnect mid-meetings (spoiler, she ended up using the integrated speakers and mic the rest of the week).
Windows is made to spy, intrude and annoy users. Even the devices ‘made for Windows’ work way better and easier on Linux, and with way less friction.
My kids are now 12 and 10 and have always used Linux exclusively. Only now they are being exposed to Windows at school, and they both hate it so much that they get home and have chosen to do some distro hopping over the weekends 🤣🤣
they get home and have chosen to do some distro hopping over the weekends
Gotta get that Microstank off. Respect. ✊
They honestly come back from school frustrated from being forced to use it, and always tell me that they get stuff done fast so they can move on to something else and drop that 🤣. I’m so proud of my kids, lol.
They really need to name the next version “Windows 76”. That should have the people throwing money at them.
“Nobody wants to Windows anymore!”
Linux: No ads, it’s free and easier than ever to install.
Install??
Mac guy, and I remember trying Linux inside Windows and installing it while using it. For someone with 30 years of experience with Windows, Linux was a fucking joke — as in the mockery it made of everything I knew about Windows. It felt like magic. It’s not very deep though — people need to realize Linux is still very much a project. macOS is a complete product, but it’s not free and it’s tied to proprietary hardware. Still, these days I see the choice between macOS and Linux. Windows doesn’t even make the ballot for me.
“EVs don’t work in cold climates, I know because I tried an electric mower 20 years ago that didn’t work in the cold so I’ve ignored all development in the last 20 years”
Same fucking logic buddy.
Tell me you haven’t used a Linux desktop recently without telling me.
“I remember”. Using that phrase tells me it wasn’t recently enough. And “using it inside windows” tells me you tried to fit a round peg into a square hole or that you don’t know what you are talking about.
You may be a MAC fan and that’s OK if that works for you, but I haven’t needed to use anything else but Linux since 2004 (initially there were always pickups, though) and I’ve been runing it without issues since probably 2010.
They said that Linux is really good, and they are not wrong that for the regular person, who struggles with even the most basic IT shit, there still isn’t a full “finished” option for them, really. Power users and more savvy people grow the technology but it’s the masses who fund it and the masses need something reliable or at least a close enough friend who can help them.
Again. Have you used Fedora, Mint, Ubuntu?
Regular people get help with basic stuff in windows All the time. That’s why there is a Geek Squad in best buy. That’s probably the only thing missing for the non technical Linux users.
If people are paying someone to “install” their printer, why would it be different with Linux.
In fact, in Linux they’d need less tech support as many windows users calls are for slowness, virus and obsolescence.
Let’s not compare usability using different standards
RHEL, SUSE (SLES), Ubuntu, Alma, Rocky, CENTOS Stream, I could go on for hours with enterprise distros that blow Windows out of the water without flinching. And if we go to specific use-case distros, that’s a list for anyone to go over for days, while Windows is aiming to be THE OS, and failing miserably at this. This has been the case for at least a decade now.
Mac? I can see how some people could be geared towards it, not because it’s any better than the worst Linux distro, but because it’s made for lazy people that have no idea how anything works.
“In my 30 years of experience”, with what? With windows trying to run some other OS inside it like an app? Don’t 30 years of experience allow you to understand the amount of resources overhead that requires and how it’s just a VM or LXC, not bare metal that you’re running? And even then, it still worked.
All the stuff in your comment screams 'I want to scream that I know about something I know nothing about". Go back to your mom’s basement to doomscroll 4chan.
RHEL, SUSE (SLES), Ubuntu, Alma, Rocky, CENTOS Stream, I could go on for hours with enterprise distros that blow Windows out of the water without flinching. And if we go to specific use-case distros, that’s a list for anyone to go over for days, while Windows is aiming to be THE OS, and failing miserably at this. This has been the case for at least a decade now.
Mac? I can see how some people could be geared towards it, not because it’s any better than the worst Linux distro, but because it’s made for lazy people that have no idea how anything works.
“In my 30 years of experience”, with what? With windows trying to run some other OS inside it like an app? Don’t 30 years of experience allow you to understand the amount of resources overhead that requires and how it’s just a VM or LXC, not bare metal that you’re running? And even then, it still worked.
All the stuff in your comment screams 'I want to scream that I know about something I know nothing about". Go back to your mom’s basement to doomscroll 4chan.
Your literally commenting using a Linux server right now. A vast majority of the fediverse is hosted on Linux systems.
The vast majority of the internet is hosted on Linux.
My what is literally commenting? My phone? My computer?
And yes, I’m aware a lot of highly technical people use Linux. This whole “next year will be the year of Linux on the desktop” is silly. We can talk for days about what highly specialised platforms use Linux. It doesn’t matter until Boomers are using it and not questioning. Which they have been for years since Android is mobile Linux.
Desktop anything is down, statistically, worldwide. I’ve been using computers for over 40 years. When I started, only nerds and geeks used them. The cool kids only used them when they had to, in computer/typing class… which was an elective when I was in school. It was never required. At some point, computers became cool. Then smartphones came out, and all of a sudden everyone’s running Linux (Android) or UNIX (iOS), only they don’t know it. They don’t need to know it. And now computers are suddenly not cool anymore, because it’s all about smartphones these days.
So it’s not a push for Linux (the kernel, Linux is a kernel, not an OS, Android, Arch, Gentoo, Fedora Core, Mint, Ubuntu and others are distributions that bundle the Linux kernel with other stuff), it’s a push for Linux on the desktop. But even that’s not good enough, it’s gotta be the command line. And Boomers are never gonna use the command line. Neither are kids. It’s a moving target that will never be reached. The original idea? Give Linux a market share? We did that 15 years ago. The only reason Windows has any market share left is some schools and businesses and governments use them. *nix has been the majority for over a decade now. But it’s never been “the year of Linux on the desktop.” *nix has been in the palm of everyone’s hands since 2007 (iPhone; Android was 2008, so close enough for Linux specifically). And 2008 was 17 years ago. Next year, there will be kids old enough to vote (in the US) who, for their entire lives, have existed in a world where *nix dominated.
Server OS is in no way comparable to desktop OS…saying Linux is king of servers means nothing to users, because Linux is not even close to having any significant market share on desktop. Linux desktop still have tons of quirks and weirdness that needs to be fixed before it has a chance of mass adoption, not to mention the vast compatibility issues with especially corporate software.
I encounter quicks and weirdnesses on the windows laptop for work, which won’t even fucking properly sleep or don’t fucking update by itself even after trying to stop it for a while, rather than on Linux.
Can you name any such quirks and annoyances on Linux specifically? Because I can give you plenty on windows, while Linux the past 10 years or so maintains my sanity.
Which reminds me. I can’t even move the taskbar to the left of the screen anymore since windows 11 was forced upon me. Pffft.
Sleep mode that doesn’t work consistently, WiFi driver issues, printer driver issues, touchpad driver issues, several different wonky ways to install programs instead of just double-clicking an .exe and pressing “next-next-OK”, random shutdown of programs for no reason or error codes…the list goes on. And on topnof that, all the stuff that people are used to using that just doesn’t run on Linux at all.
I love Linux, but I admit these are valid. I’ve had some of these same issues.
Sleep mode that doesn’t work consistently,
I haven’t had any issues with sleep on my devices, but I have in the recent past on previous hardware.
WiFi driver issues, printer driver issues, touchpad driver issues,
My WiFi doesn’t work at all on my desktop. Though it’s worked on a live image from another distro so seems likely to be an issue with the distro’s distributed kernel, not a Linux one. I run a rolling release distro so won’t be that the kernel is too old. But don’t care so haven’t troubleshot it much. My printer requires the use of vendor provided drivers, which are only available for some distros. It works, but not a solution I’m happy with. Never had touchpad issues.
several different wonky ways to install programs instead of just double-clicking an .exe and pressing “next-next-OK”,
I think package repos > collecting and installing your software piecemeal from all over the place. But having to deal with repos, flatpaks, appimages, etc. can be daunting.
random shutdown of programs for no reason or error codes
Sounds like an OOM process kill maybe? That’ll show in your kernel logs if so. But no immediate visual feedback.
…the list goes on. And on topnof that, all the stuff that people are used to using that just doesn’t run on Linux at all.
If there’s proprietary software that doesn’t run on Linux that someone wants/needs to run and there aren’t any viable alternatives then yeah, probably a non-starter. There’s wine of course but it can be a crapshoot. No shade intended towards the project. It’s amazing what it can do, even if it can’t do everything.
Because Windows is so polished, flawless and frictionless, right? I don’t believe it will EVER be the “year of the Linux desktop” because that’s not even a thing, so I agree with you there. However, the one thing none of you Windows-defenders can’t argue with is the fact that an extremely large percentage of people that try Linux, after a while, end up forgetting all about windows and never come back.
You can argue all you want in terms of marketshare, but that’s all Windows has working for it. It’s not because it’s stable, or because it’s ‘user friendly’ and certainly not because it’s beautiful.
And it’s been years since using CLI is entirely optional, unless you break something catastrophically (short of a hardware failure, guess what, you’d need CLI to make this happen). You can do everything over GUI. In Windows, anything that is even remotely damaged turns into a fucking reinstall that usually takes hours, vs just reinstalling ANY Linux distro, while keeping your home partition intact, only because you’re bored and want to try something else, which takes around 15 minutes.
See how all your rant makes no sense at all? Once you’ve driven a Bentley, you’d be hard pressed to return to a Honda Civic.
I use Mint on my daily driver laptop, and I’m not defending windows, but the fact that things are way less intuitive in Linux makes it less user friendly and not a good solution for non-techies. I mean, I have to use one of 3 different ways of installing something depending in what the dev kind of feels for, that’s insanely terrible UX.
The installation options for software (not OS), in the vast majority of cases (apps) we are given the option of FlatPak, appimage or packages (and fucking Snaps), and choosing a GUI ‘app store’ or CLI. Yes there are cases in which you only have 1 option, but those are not the rule, but the exception. How exactly is this worse than in Windows having to download a .exe file and go through a whole lot of ‘accept’ dialogs, or Windows store? Isn’t this more accessible and friendlier to any taste? One of the reasons my wife is so sold on Fedora Workstation on her PC (while having to use Windows on her laptop because of some backwards bullshit system she needs to maintain our company taxes) is because, believe it or not, stuff just works, anything she wants to do has an option in the ‘Software’ app for her to just install, and move on (mostly FlatPaks). Windows is constantly giving her issues, pushing crap she’s not interested in, suddenly breaking for no apparent reason, wifi randomly disconnecting, or the amazingly insightful ‘an error has occurred’ or something like that which only serves to state the obvious with absolutely no way to figure out what the fuck went wrong and try to fix it to avoid it happening again.
You actually think Windows provides a better user experience than the shittiest Linux distro with the most horrible DE or WM? You’re out of your mind man.
No Linux distro is perfect, but Windows is objectively the biggest pain in the ass to install, maintain, use and even shut down.
I’ll challenge you, or anyone, to purposely break your windows system, to the point that reinstalling is the only option to get that computer back up and running, and do the same with any Linux distro (short of fucking Arch). See what provides you with more frustration and longer down time. This is the one thing in which Windows wins every time, fucking down time and frustration. No other OS comes even close.
I love my Mac for development work, but the Mac window manager is more buggy than i3 window manager in Linux.
And much less secure.
But yeah we use all three big OSes work. The OS should be the least important part of the machine honestly. Programs are what are important.
It’s significantly more secure than windows, but yes there is much more malware available for MacOS these days.
I literally have tux tattoo’d on my chest and make my living writing software for Linux … but I’d choose my Mac to develop on every day of the week.
It’s weird that I’m here now, because I do love Linux and wish I could tile like i3 (or even easily replace the Window Managwr at all) but … it’s a easier daily driver for working
I should also add the caveat that if I was buying my own work machine I’d not buy a Mac, but if work is gonna provide the MBP I want my M chip lmao
The hardest person to convert is a “power user”. I guess you should let Red Hat and SUSE know their main product is a project. Oh and Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc…
Can regular users even use Red Hat anymore? Fedora Core is the open source spinoff. I loved using Red Hat in the 90s and I never warmed up to Fedora Core.
Fedora Core hasn’t been a thing in decades, it’s just Fedora or the Fedora Project now. CentOS Stream is ABI compatible with RHEL If you create a free Red Hat Developer account you can get 16 free RHEL licenses. So, yes you very much can run RHEL.
Edit: If you or anyone else is interested https://developers.redhat.com/articles/faqs-no-cost-red-hat-enterprise-linux
Oh man, if you haven’t used linux is that long it’s changed drastically (for the better) since then.
You heard what he said he installed every distro at once as a joke, what a project. Then he paid Steve jobs $3k to step on his balls.
Linux was a fucking joke
What
It’s not very deep
the
It’s still very much a project
fuck, over?
Ah, I knew someone would misread that. What I meant as “a fucking joke” was that it made a mockery of everything I thought I knew about Windows.
Of course, it made a mockery of everything you know of Windows because it’s not like Windows. Neither is it meant to be used like one nor is it heading in that direction (not to mention that Windows is one monotonous thing, like if you know your hands across one install of Windows, you know it all. The same is not true about Linux. A Void Linux user might still not be as adept at a Gentoo install).
You are contradicting yourself. First you call it magic and then you call it not very deep. If it’s the latter, why do so many production servers run on Linux?
Some Linux distros like Debian have a fantastic reputation for stability. Sure, bugs still exist. I personally struggle with a distro agnostic bug that breaks workflows often on my current setup. But things have come a long way. And it’s better than Windows non customizable privacy invading approach any day.
The twin advantages Windows has is wrt games (though that is slowly being covered) and more importantly, specialized software. I know folks IRL who have to use Windows just because their work requires it.
Is bootloader locked on mac or apple products?
On iPhone, absolutely. On Mac, I’m not sure. I know I can use the disk manager to make a new partition, install whatever OS on it I want — though, my Macs are both ARM64, so I’m quite limited there — and boot to it. I’m not sure if it’s fair to say “the bootloader is unlocked” though. Since it’s Apple’s bootloader. I don’t know if I can change it. Like on Android, when I used to mess with custom firmware ~10 years ago, we’d replace the garbage Android bootloader with TWRP (Team Win Recovery Project) and that would give us the option to make backups and to flash custom forks of Android (e.g. CyanogenMod, AOKP, etc.). And some of those bootloaders were locked down pretty tight (like HTC’s) where some were wide open (like Samsung, before Knox was a thing).
Yes. However, it’s not super difficult to get a signed image to meet the requirements. To my knowledge they aren’t actively trying to prevent the installation of other operating systems. The bigger issue is the software supporting their unique hardware.
I understand there’s quite a few missing drivers on the latest Macs. It’s possible to run Linux but I don’t think it’s especially user friendly at the moment. Apple does a lot of custom stuff and not all of their hardware has open source drivers available.
Don’t they have a bunch of kernel changes that they can’t merge upstream?
Ah, it appears that it’s indeed a work in progress. If I was going to try it, this is definitely the distribution I would use. But I don’t think a whole lot of people are able to run Ubuntu for example. It’s going to be a more limited selection because of the hardware.
I have a windows game box, it nags me to backup my photos when I visualise 1 (one) image.
What a shit OS it has become lol.
Lmao. Genius, hope whoever suggested this got a raise. Can imagine the meeting where it has been decided. "Hey, have we thought about fullscreen ads for something we want to push on people?” "Genius idea, Maxwell! Go home to your wife and kids and tell them a big fat bonus is coming to their smart father!”
“In fact, go to my home and fuck my wife. Full screen ad? Brilliant!”
Once you people have finally had enough, Linux and/or Libre Office will be right there. Waiting.
There are some tools that can make Linux feel more like home too for those who want to transition slowly
I did this over a year ago. Man, I love that my computing is boring again. No distractions. The machine does what I tell it to do. It’s lovely! Boring is lovely.
I wasn’t specially speaking to OP, so much as any visiting Window 11 / Microsoft 365 user. The poor bastards.
With due respect, no. Office suites on Linux aren’t on par with MS Office yet (and the latter sucks a lot, but not for the lack of features). MS Office and Origin Pro are the actual reasons I keep a Windows VM laying around (on Arch, btw).
Onlyoffice is not sufficient for you?
For some reason it slows down to a lot, to the point of being unusable, with many slides full of equations and also crashed on me a couple of times, so no. And I’m pretty sure my OS and hardware are fine. PowerPoint also may suffer a bit but it’s still usable (although it takes many seconds to save a file, in this scenario).
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted but that’s a legitimate reason. Unfortunately, Microsoft Office has a total monopoly of the office market so incompatibilities are bound to happen with alternative Office software.
Most of the younger generation uses online office or google docs from what I see.
Its the old fogies that use offline office tools.
None of these support equations in presentations adequately, for instance, something which is crucial for my job. And LaTeX and beamer are extremely time consuming for presentations (even if LaTeX is perfectly fine for long text/articles).
If you want O365, you could try OnlyOffice or OpenDesk (not sure if I spelled it correctly)
