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The day Windows died

thomasbandt.com

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Re: The day Windows died

#911

Post by dspillett »

photonbeam wrote: post #862
dspillett wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand how Microsoft can cheapen their main OS that much. If they could just drop it right now, both desktop and server, without causing a major explosion, I'm pretty sure they would. The hassle of dealing with hardware compatibility and vendors can't be worth the small amount that get per licence these days, why not let Apple and Open Source deal with that collection of end-user grief? Server-side & si…

What stops MS from raising OEM windows licensing prices 3x

Those bulk licences are very cheap – the change would make them surprisingly little (a lot to you or I, but not in the grand scheme of MS finances!) and the backlash would be loud because OEMs would push that change 100% to the end user. Politicians would be all over it too: it would be a great point to distract voters away from other matters with, the donations they'd need to make elsewhere to distract enough of those politicians might eat a fair chunk of any extra income! The backlash wouldn't just affect that market: competitors would be quick to throw out “if they can do that to Windows, they can do it to your Office/VisualStudio/Azure/other subscription too”.

That, and while there is a push to get other apps stable and feature complete online or otherwise on other-OS options, they are not close enough to any such goal that trying to kill their own OS that way is desirable enough to make it worth the risk yet.

This is what I mean by “if they could they would”. To be more specific: “if they could without it pushing people away from their other products as well”.

Also, the big EOM contracts will have some pricing guarantees within they. All others things permitting, they still couldn't make such a change quickly.

Re: The day Windows died

#912

Post by Stratoscope »

contravariant wrote: post #645
raxxorraxor wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how Microsoft can cheapen their main OS that much. If they really wanted to emulate Apple, they wouldn't fill their OS with trash in every corner. This also extends to the default landing page of Edge. This is the worst form of bullvard, it is a tiny bit better than directly advocating for penis enlargement on the internet. But not by much at all. There should be no ads on the OS level. Especially…

To be fair to Microsoft this was a Lenovo laptop. Though why Microsoft continues to do business with a company that thought it was a good idea to install a root certificate (with a publicly known private key) onto every single laptop they sold so they could MITM some ads into websites is beyond me.

> every single laptop they sold

That's not correct. ThinkPads never had this stuff on them.

Re: The day Windows died

#913

Post by reactorpres »

elihu wrote: post #839
chongli wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing Microsoft and Apple seems appropriate because they both develop operating systems that compete in the consumer market. It’s really not. Apple is a hardware company that develops an operating system and services to add value to their hardware. They make nearly all of their money from hardware. For the longest time, Microsoft didn’t really make any hardware at all, apart from some peripherals like keyboards a…

I think the main positive impact Microsoft had on the tech industry that they don't get enough credit for is that they allowed a competitive market for hardware to exist. (This was in part because IBM didn't insist that DOS be exclusive to IBM devices.) Hardware wasn't their business, so from their point of view, the more suppliers the better. We had fierce competition between manufacturers and they /mostly/ competed…

Doesn’t Microsoft still make money from OEMs? Wouldn’t that be roughly the same as apple baking the os cost into the hardware?

Re: The day Windows died

#914

Post by CoastalCoder »

fsflover wrote: post #733
CoastalCoder wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just helped my brother install Linux on an XPS 13. The main part he had trouble with was configuring the firmware to allow the installation, and then know about the new UEFI partition, and then forget about the no-longer-extant Windows boot partitions. It wasn't obvious how to make that work even for me.

I had no problems like this with my installation. It's just that some people don't even know about bootable USB sticks - this level of "non-technical".

I thought I understood USB-stick bootability, but perhaps not well enough. Could you elaborate?

Re: The day Windows died

#915

Post by vladfr »

jchw wrote: post #476
piyush_soni wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone is here to become a Computer Scientist or even a computer professional unfortunately, they want to study their favorite subject, do screen recordings, make nice presentations etc. Our company uses RHEL / CentOS distributions of Linux. And they still suffer from all these weird problems I don't find 'fun' to fix because I have actual work to do, but I have to anyway.

Not everyone was out to become a computer scientist when microcomputers booted to BASIC, but I don't find many people regretting their time growing up with those computers. I will give you that Linux is needlessly complex due to undesirable issues, but that's the price of admission for a highly hackable system, since there are no serious alternatives. As for kids, I wouldn't underestimate them. If what you want to gi…

Interesting takes on Linux and ipads. My 2-year old is interested in typing with colours. I found that the iPad is better in many ways: its size is perfect, the 1st gen keyboard is light and thin, and the touchscreen is a boon.

But I'm not going to let her have one when she's older. I now realise that I would love a Linux tablet. Not a small laptop, but a touch tablet, thin, with a light keyboard too.

Is there such a thing out there? Or should I start building one now?

Re: The day Windows died

#916

Post by wazoox »

I've bought my wife a Lenovo Ideapad. First boot into BIOS, deactivate UEFI secure boot. Second boot into Linux (Pop_OS). Works really great. Didn't bother with the Microsoft crap for 20 years. Didn't even try to boot Windows 11 once to see how it looks, I don't even want to know at this point.

Re: The day Windows died

#917

Post by throwthisawayhn »

znpy wrote: post #807
Aeolun wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess I'll crawl back into my cave and keep using Linux for the foreseeable future. I’d been using Windows for so long, dealing with all the issues, random installs, shutdowns and all the crap. Then one fateful day 3 years ago I installed linux, and I haven’t had to think about my computer ever since. It’s absurd.

Indeed. Years ago maintaining a linux installation was a part time job. Did you update the kernel? Have fun recompiling the nvidia driver. Usb modem? Roll 19 or higher for some random package off sourceforge to support your device and roll a 20 for some kind soul to have written an howto. Bluetooth audio? Who knows! Printing? Sure, let’s dive into lpd’s legacy on this earth. Attaching an external display? You’ll love…

    > Bluetooth audio? Who knows!

    > Attaching an external display? You’ll love reading xrandr’s manoage EVERY TIME.
It's funny you mention this, I've had both of these problems since 2020 and in fact haven't found a way to resolve them to this day. I have to boot into Windows just to connect to an HDMI display or use Bluetooth headphones.

    > Did you update the kernel? Have fun recompiling the nvidia driver.
My kernel updated from 5.15 to 5.18 and almost all my programs that use Nvidia hardware acceleration stopped working. I had to learn how to downgrade my kernel just to be able to hardware encode videos again.

    > A package outside the official repository?
Software distribution on Linux is still a massive dumpster fire, you'd think Flatpaks/AppImages would solve that but they introduce their own problems. I often just bite the bullet and compile everything from source since there's literally no other option.

Re: The day Windows died

#918

Post by shrimp_emoji »

iamleppert wrote: post #803

You do not own the OS. You didn't create it, and you don't even own a copy of it. You have a very limited license to it, as in permission to use it in a very specific manner, and no other rights other than those that you were granted. If you look closely even those rights may be subject to change, and change without your approval. Microsoft, under their current license, is free to do whatever they want to their OS, a…

>Users are more akin to cattle

My god, Terry Davis was right D:

Re: The day Windows died

#919

Post by guilamu »

crimsontech wrote: post #815
guilamu wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There most certainly won't be any ads in the LTSC version of Windows 11 (coming this year... probably).

How do you get a single user license for LTSC though?

Here: https://m.urcdkey.com/windows-10-enterprise-ltsc-2019-cd-key...

Re: The day Windows died

#920

Post by diffeomorphism »

leonroy wrote: post #890
cujaneway wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should check out what Lenovo is doing currently; I just picked up a X1 Carbon 6th gen for £340 and loaded Ubuntu on it. The machine runs incredibly well, the trackpad is fantastic and it's a very quiet machine. Literally blew me away with the value for money, coming from my experience with Dell / Huawei laptops they're great.

I have a T14s Gen 3 and whilst it's a fine laptop it has minor quirks which make it a compromised experience vs a Macbook Air. Screen resolution caps out at 1920x1200 which feels blurry coming from the 2560x1600 a Macbook provides. Its speakers are awful - they use EQ under Windows (provided by the Lenovo Vantage software) to sound vaguely reasonable. Under Linux no such EQ exists (even though Linux is supported by L…

> caps out at 1920x1200.

No? Just opened the lenovo website and it says

Up to 35,6 cm (14") 2,8K OLED (2.880 x 1.800) IPS, 16:10, DisplayHDR™ True Black 500, Dolby® Vision™

So higher res and oled.

> 1tb ssd, 32gb ram. Comparable macbook air m1 is 1600.

Can you even get an air with 32gb of ram? Or what do you mean by "comparable"?

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