241–250 of 640 posts
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How would the answer to this question illuminate your understanding? People using windows at their job also don't care. "Caring" does not need to be consistent across a group of people.
What kind of answer is this? This seems condescending and literally provides no answer. Why even post this?
I would never advise anyone buy a Microsoft Windows laptop these days — between the forced updates, the account and service-fee thirst, ads, and consumer unfriendly product release process (forced opt-in). Guess what? With Apple's new Neo laptop the price is also way way wayyy out to lunch. If MSFT gives a business a huge bulk discount to buy their laptops + Office360 + Teams... OK? But as a "consumer" it really suck…
Anyway, I installed Linux Mint on there. She has been using it every day and at least according to her there hasn't really been any jank (and I told her to call me any time if something breaks and I'll fix it).
At this point, I think Linux distros have gotten good enough to realistically start stealing users away from Windows. Linux Mint is easy to use, runs fine even on modest hardware, and doesn't push a bunch of shitty ads at you. I think there is an option for telemetry, but I also think that disabling it actually disables it.
Wine and Proton have gotten so good that outside of modern MS Office, most Windows things just run if you need it, but if you're not using MS Office heavily then you likely can get by with web apps and/or the Linux alternatives.
Maybe it really will be the Year of the Linux Desktop!
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I've done this several times over the last 18 years or so. The most recent was a few months a go. And my steamdeck persuaded me. Unfortunately I ran into the same WiFi networking issue I've never managed to resolve. Even on different hardware. Pings to my default gateway are ridiculously slow compared to windows. I spent countless hours trying to resolve. I gave up and have gone with windows 11 ltsc.
This is the type of thing that AI is actually good at diagnosing in my experience. Haven't had anything similar happen but seems more of a router issue upstream. Maybe worth checking what Steam Deck's connection has configured differently given it's on the same network?
With ssh access to the underlying arch/fedora fork, it'd be an easy fix with AI
Serious question: why is this not a problem with apple products?
The key difference is that you do not need an Apple account to use a Mac. Most people DO use one, though, because that's how you access the iCloud services that underpin the Apple ecosystem. But it's not MANDATORY. My understanding is that you cannot even log into a Windows machine without an MSFT account. That's a big difference.
You can also still log in with a completely local account as well. It takes a few extra minutes to set up but once configured it works fine.
The system is full of dark patterns and roadblocks that steer users towards an MS account, but you don't have to use one.
This "make Windows better" push is far more political than technological. It's a fight with other divisions about using Windows as a marketing and sales channel for other products and services. It has to be a decision from the very top. I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. It's not just 10% of revenue, it's a foundation for how…
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> I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. i agree with most of what you said, but this is borderline fantasy. the majority of home market share is not guaranteed, sure. with how good gaming is on non-windows machines now, there isnt much for a home user to get locked-in with (except games that require windows-only malware i.e. anti…
> with how good gaming is on non-windows machines now, there isn't much for a home user to get locked-in with The options for the average user are not linux or windows, but only macOS or Windows. Gaming is abysmal on macOS on any of the current hardware. That said, I agree with you that there's less-and-less gaming lock-in on windows, but that's because the majority of gamers are gaming on iOS and android.
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Who says the engineers have any leverage they can push with? I sure didn't, when I worked there.
Not listening to engineers is a serious engineering problem that's played out in construction, automotive and software engineering dozens of times over. The penalty for Microsoft ignoring their devs might just be a slow decline into irrelevance, not a bridge collapsing, or an autonomous vehicle hitting the lane barrier because the boss refuses to use LiDAR, but it's all bad management causing an engineering problem.
No, that's the very archetype of a political problem. It is a political problem that impacts the engineering output, yes, but still a political problem.
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The key difference is that you do not need an Apple account to use a Mac. Most people DO use one, though, because that's how you access the iCloud services that underpin the Apple ecosystem. But it's not MANDATORY. My understanding is that you cannot even log into a Windows machine without an MSFT account. That's a big difference.
Also people probably have more of a problem with MS accounts because they don’t really have an ecosystem that provides clear value. An Apple account together with an iPhone and MacBook let’s you share clipboard, passwords, notes etc., a no brainer. Windows laptop and iPhone? I guess an Apple account still is more useful here too, actually. So the average user does not really need an MS account, hence the annoyance.
Too little, too late. I switched to Linux and I'm never looking back. Good riddance, Microsoft.
The problem with linux is that it is made and maintained by people who love linux. Until product people start getting involved, it's damned to it's eternal ~5% consumer market penetration.
To specialize that statement a bit, Linux is made and maintained by people who showed up and contributed. These two facts create a vicious cycle. The people show up to add things they love to Linux, and Linux becomes something that only those exact people love. We're deep into this spiral where Linux has become specialized for ultra-nerds who enjoy solving puzzles to get their wifi to work.
If you look at old Linux magazines, the community is completely different. People were focused on "beating Microsoft" and democratizing computing. The people who took those goals seriously have left the scene.
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"Suddenly" in this case does not mean tomorrow. It means that, today, a lot of enterprises begin pondering the question, and then about a year from now, they start seriously studying and prototyping it, and then "suddenly" in 2029 Microsoft starts seeing a deluge of defections. It means a whole bunch of peopling finishing the conversion all at once, relatively speaking, even if that "all at once" is 3-4 years away. T…
> 20 years is way too large a minimum estimate. i disagree. unless intuit is also rewriting quickbooks, dassault systèmes is rewriting solidworks, every bank is rewriting their custom windows-only software, every government branch is rewriting their custom windows-only software, etc. and every company is willing to retrain 95% of their employees on a new operating system, have increased support requirements for a few…
The market you're describing is real, and very significant—but I don't think it's even a majority of Windows users. If so, it's a small one.
And imagine what even 30-40% of all Windows sales disappearing over the course of 2-3 years would do to Microsoft. To Windows as a platform.
Then imagine what would happen if it was 50-70%.
The former, I would describe as "a disaster".
The latter, I would describe as "apocalyptic". (Y'know. For Microsoft as a company. Not in general.)