Windows is the same. By Microsoft removing all bypass measures that make it tolerable, their remaining user base will just end up being people who don't care about security and privacy, people who won't complain about being inundated with ads, AI, and bingware, people who have no idea that a modern operating system should be fast, customizable, and open. That 90% customer base is easy to fleece with 10% effort, so why bother with the 10% base that will require 90% effort?
My mom works as a translator and all she needs is email, something to edit documents in and a browser, thats it. She was able adapt to ubuntu pretty fast even though she's not the kind of person who likes learning new tech.
There must be millions of users just like her. But people are very resistant to change and few have an annoying linux evangelist like myself in the house to push them.
We need to get them young somehow. I'm thinking around highschool.
I'm reminded of this great article on the subject
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interopera...
Unfortunately MS make everything a moving target.
Unfortunately my parents run macos and these tools are not meant for Macos. But like you said there are apps like UTM that provide a nice shell for QEMU on macos. Not as nice as streaming just the app, but a good start. These work great on new macmini with apple silicon.
virsh start ms-malware11 # or any other method to launch your vm
sleep 20
remmina -c /home/me/ms-malware11.remmina
It requires a bit of setup on Linux. First install a win11 vm, you can do it graphically via `virtual machine manager` from libvirt. Then install remmina and configure a profile `ms-malware11.remmina`, also graphically. In that profile, under Advanced, have Startup Program "AutoDesk.exe" or whatever that is called.
Then Autodesk runs like any linux application, the user doesn't see it runs in a vm. This feature depends on RemoteApp feature in Windows.
This is something your mom probably wouldn't setup by hand, but anybody here should be able to.
Hyper-V and Virtualization Framework wish they were so user friendly.
https://www.winboat.app/ (Their motto is "Run windows application with seamless integration " so I think it might work for your use case as well)
This.. but whenever this is mentioned people will start the other point. Google is not for privacy.
I have become a silent spectator.
My dad's always searching for some usb drive he lost with hours of work on it. He'd be much better off using google.
Or gamers that are already used to Windows. So inertia.
I think people like me are the real first line that's most likely to switch - techy people who play games (which had so far kept them on Windows) and that suffer firsthand at Microsoft's attempts to get them directly in addition to already being treated horribly by default. This group is less afraid of changing things up and has more incentives to switch. But if we talk of gamers in general, it may take a while until a meaningful number of them switch over, even though they are far more motivated than the average PC user. Even though they're the prime candidates, it's going to be a very, very steep uphill battle.
Your first step is start swapping out Windows-specific programs for cross-platform alternatives. Eventually you'll have to just cut the rest loose and make the jump though. Don't bother dual-booting either or you'll just delay it further.
I made the transition a few years ago and it was far less dramatic than I imagined.
- Fusion 360 (the only alternative seems to be learning a different, likely far more involved CAD)
- Paint.NET (a simple, quick, no-nonsense image editor - while there are image editor alternatives, as far as I can tell there's nothing quite like it)
The bigger issue that might keep me dual-booting are graphical features. Things like VR and HDR are already known to be janky on their "native" Windows implementations, so I'm scared to imagine what any of that is going to be like on Linux. Neither are common use cases, but I still want to hold onto those where possible.
The Nvidia issue is overblown IMO. If you use their binary blobs it works pretty well.
Don't forget to back up.
What a ridiculous idea. Any serious person knows that a modern operating system must, above all, be profitable, profitable and profitable. Caring about people doesn't make you any money, and since you already make up most of the market, it's not like you need to entice anyone over.
A slightly less provocative and crass version of the above, yet one that still conveys the exact same message, is probably what most of the higher-ups of the software world believe. At least the ones that call the shots seem to.
able to run on any hardware
free for basic usage, paid for commercial usage
lightweight, simple, stripped of all cruft and extras
consistent in it's UI and cleaned up from 40 years of inconsistencies
But they didn't - so people are looking for alternatives.
I grew up with Microsoft and now you have to pay me to use their products. I would never choose their OS for product hosting. Even their embedded / IoT is trying to force a Microsoft account and push against local user.
Desktops existed before punching in your credit card numbers was a common thing, that history is hard to shrug.
Xbox for gamers, mobile for everyone else and business editions of windows for the enterprise.
and, unfortunately, they are not alone. Google has been doing this for years and Apple is slowly following suit.
Math is hard.
Says who? I did a gap year service project and graduated at age 23. My business partner did a 3-2 program and graduated at 23.
Plus, anyone working as an engineer then has a 8 figure net worth and the overwhelming majority moved on long ago.
Then again, I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem
Yes, they do. Unfortunately even MS employees are powerless to do anything about the crap that gets shoved into Windows by other employees working at the company, and the ones who complain about it are quietly shown the door or have already left of their own will, leaving only those who are completely apathetic or...
Then again, I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem
Exactly. That and the desire to remain in the country --- part of the reason why companies like H-1Bs so much is because they are going to be far more docile and less willing to resist doing things they feel are wrong.
They don't make money (put bread on the table) by selling Windows any more. That is soooo 2000s.
Income is from data mining and from subscriptions to cloudy offerings that are mostly MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
Oh, and hyping their perceived value to the point that the term "meme stock" is no longer just a joke.
Nvidia is doing something similar where they're just extracting as much as possible out of AI companies and not caring one bit about consumers.
How does whatever microsoft is doing to windows line up with that?
It's just a different way to say "you're the product, not the customer" if you look at the statement from a neutral perspective - the whale being the actual customer, who changes all the time depending on what Microsoft MBAs think might have the highest potential value they can extract.
Who's the "whale" in this context? Windows users who subscribe to copilot? Enterprise? Advertisers?
So consumers are mostly ignored, except as a testbed to shove AI and ads.
And lose all the OEM license money?
Just hypothetically... of course they're not actually doing this?
----
Anywho, doesn't matter cause my Xeon went from Windows 10 to Linux, this year. Still rocking a Win7Pro Core2Duo (as my second favorite machine).
I don't understand what's going on at Microsoft, but they leave huge stacks of money on the table. LTSC versions weren't "popular", they were the least worst option for a lot of industries. And now they kinda completely ignored all customer feedback.
95 good, NT 4 bad, 98 good, 98 SE bad, 2000 good, Me bad, XP good, Vista bad, 7 good...
The plan with Windows 10 was to light their desktop market share on fire in the hopes they could see iPads in the distance and try to chase them. Windows 11 was codenamed "give your toxic ex a second chance."
Windows is an OS for the people who use the users.
Now, it should be "where do we want you to go today?"
"Let Copilot decide where you want to go today!"
Just look at google and their chat softwares... you either make something new, or someone else does and you're left behind... be it ads in their start menu, spyware "AI", or paid solitaire.
A few industries reward that. Telcos and other parts of critical infrastructure come to mind.
Is goal is increase revenue! Create project to roll out fibre to a new rural community. Sign up all 40 houses in that community at $100 a month.
Project cost $10 mil.
Bonuses and promotions for increased revenue!
I run Active Directory at home, for various reasons. I’ve got Group Policy in a good enough shape now that I’m not terribly troubled by Microsoft’s enshittification but it took substantial effort to get there, and it requires some work to maintain.
... While also maintaining their famous backwards compatibility?
I hate adobes current business model and for that matter fusion360 as well. It’s all internet required bullshit but it’s making them tons of money and there are no viable alternatives.
I work in e-waste recycling, and it's my first Windows-free job. A family friend called me for advice on her old decrepit laptop. I told her about my work "laptop": a Surface Pro tablet with Linux. I just sold one to her, partially on the security and privacy advantages of Linux.
How does one get into this, preferably without having to be a yardie for a few years (I'm an electrician with a degree in chemistry)?
Fellow Win7Pro retro machiner.
I work in the refurb division. I walk though the receiving and demanufacturing areas looking for things that would be worth our time to resell.
Though if you have a chemistry degree, you'd probably be more helpful to the people we sell scrap to. From what the boss told me, they're the ones who shred PCBs, drives, etc. and dissolve them in acid to extract metals and other materials, like one would with mined ore.
And our certifications require us to use buyers who don't turn around and ship things off to the third world for "processing": https://sustainableelectronics.org/welcome-to-r2v3/
>I had a friend working there
Also how I got my first tech job, working in a laptop repair facility (on-site for a large engineering team).
>you'd probably be more helpful to the people we sell scrap to
Thanks for the certification links (which has a map with hundreds of locations — none near me, but have been looking for a smaller community and this is helpful information).
And until Linux implements similar abstractions in the Kernel akin to Filter Drivers in Windows, Linux will never have a proper anticheat.
I think the success of the Steam Deck has really helped the situation, and the titles that are broken because of anticheat are not important enough to me to keep a Windows system around.
Oh and rootkit level EAC? Expect that to go away on Windows too when MS finally gets sick of Crowdstrike and that ilk causing self inflicted Denial of Service attacks on whole economic sectors.
It’s one of the bigger failures of antitrust enforcement I can think of
(I can think of much larger screw ups involving lack of antitrust enforcement, to be clear.)
EDIT: sorry, I completely misread your comment. You're right about the latency issue, but that's also an issue with client-side prediction implementations, which provide a small window in which all client packets are trusted, rather than just the latest ones (eg to be able to rewind when computing collision detection in a fast paced shooter)
The real challenge to solve is botting, which includes things like aimbots, macros the negate recoil, etc. It's basically impossible to solve this, regardless of operating system or hardware (eg external cheat peripherals)
I see it as a moderation issue, which is unavoidable. Just focus on building tools to help users report cheaters rather than try to automate the whole thing via flawed anticheat spyware, and missing out on potentially the next big PC gaming platform in the process.
It's not. But it is much more expensive on the server-side, i.e. paid by the company, so the real solution of mainframe + thin clients is not one that companies want to implement. Instead, they rely on computing on the client model, which is what opens up the door to cheats.
E.g. Aimbots and Recoil suppressors are non existent if it's the server calculating trajectories and telling the clients "your bullet hit exactly here (X, Y, Z), go draw an impact texture in there". But as said, that means a lot of computing done on the server. Not cheap, but given the $millions invested so far in anticheat tech over the years, one has to wonder if it wouldn't really be cheaper, after all...
Some Valve guy gave a great talk about their cheating detection a while back; I found it incredibly impressive: https://youtu.be/ObhK8lUfIlc (can't comment on their effectiveness these days, haven't played CS in a long time)
For example, I've seen other programs refuse to run if you had Sysinternals Procmon running, or various standalone debuggers. Would you be deemed a "risky" user if you used tools like that?
Not sure how much gamers with a modicum of awareness (already a minority) will care, but the risk is there. We could paraphrase that famous line to say that "The 'S' in 'Kernel anticheat' stands for Security".
But I know what you mean. Another niche that really doesn't go well on Linux is VR.
I'm glad none of the games that require this really appeal to me these days
I don't mind Windows being relegated to a niche of the stuff that runs CS while Linux based OS works for every other purpose.
Name one thing that needs it.
With Arch Linux + the nvidia-open package, the Linux desktop experience is miles better than when I last tried in 2017 with Ubuntu
Personally I have been playing it on Arch Linux since release and it has always worked just fine, besides it being a deeply janky game regardless of OS.
Happy diving.
Building products on top of Windows seems to limit the lifetime of the product to whatever support Microsoft seem to be willing to provide.
The best time to migrate off Windows was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
Microsoft isn't abandoning these markets. They've been min-maxing consumer software enshittification for years now and doing an extremely good job, but they still have good options for enterprise.
I make such comments. Tell me: what exactly is problematic about medical, offshore drilling, etc industries which makes it difficult or impossible to switch?
... wanna hire me to work on that? I am convinced that, whatever the cost is, it will be cheaper than using software on a very-outdated very-proprietary operating system for another couple of decades.
All these reasons suck, but they’re all reality in one industry or another sadly.
Linux kernel is open source and really easy to read, and also fairly easy to write drivers for.
> proprietary protocols
I've written many network softwares, and proprietary protocols aren't difficult to me.
> vendor warranties/support
Fuck vendor lock-in. Move to Linux.
> licensing/relicensing
Fuck vendors.
> paying you to do the work
...is cheaper than paying vendors.
> waiting for the work to be done/tested
Here, let me demonstrate that it works... with many many many automated tests.
> * paying for workforce re-training*
Not really important if it's well-done.
> justifying this to management
A lot of business management can't see past their own nose until it comes to money. Do some maths and show them the cost savings in a presentation. They'll listen.
The best option in these cases is to isolate the system from external networks to keep it secured and keep operating until the organization can afford a major capital expenditure to replace everything.
I ran out of patience years ago for the inevitable results of letting an unaccountable third party own decision-making on your critical systems. I'd much rather have that argument when the CEOs aren't breathing down our necks.
> you have no test environment
That can be solved.
> the original vendor no longer exists
Even more reason that your company needs to upgrade.
> That computer is connected to industrial equipment that costs millions of dollars ... any failure or downtime at best will cause millions in financial losses
I heard a minute of downtime on an oil rig costs millions in financial losses.
So a fuck-up is extremely expensive. Nothing new to me. I've also worked in industries where a fuck-up can cost lives. That's also extremely expensive.
Trust me, there are software engineers and hardware engineers who know your pains and aren't afraid of how difficult you think this stuff is. Yes it's difficult, no it's not impossible. And it's a lot cheaper than you think if it's done right.
I'm sure you can rewrite every piece of professional software yourself in a day for $100 and offer zero support. That will go over swimmingly in the real world.
You clearly dont understand that you dont get to make those decisions. Your users need software X to do Y as a business requirement. Are you going to tell them fuck off because you dont support windows? Sure, you could, once.
And no manager would ever okay someone writing a fuckton of driver shit or reverse engineering some protocols just so you can be high king and not use a specific OS.
Fact is business needs drive whats used, and you do not get a say in it, you might think you do, but you really dont. You can give information and options but ultimately it wont be your decision and youll support what the business needs you to support, or you wont be with the business anymore.
Yeah i agree vendors suck and so do license related shit, but you arent going to convince management that you could write a superior product AND support it for less than the cost the vendor would charge the company. And yes, this isnt always true, there are obviously some times when it is actually better to do it yourself, or use a foss solution. You still wont win in most cases. Users are going to use the thing they need and if youre blocking them from moving forward, youre more problem than the software youre trying to stop deployment of.
Even if for now the stats (e.g. steam hardware survey), show only a slight increase in Linux users (and a lot of them could be dual booting)
I should have a valid license for windows, my Win 8 Pro license (which I paid full price for, like $150) should have worked for Windows 10 (and then transfered to 11) but it's not working anymore for whatever reason, I probably upgraded without disabling the key somewhere or whatever. So when I use Windows I have that "activation required" nag watermark now. When microsoft finally remotely kills my unactivated windows 10 install (a week from now? 6 months?) I'm just not going back. The only reason I dual boot these days is fusion 360 CAD and there's a steam install on there so it's probably showing up as a windows install even though I haven't played games on there in probably years.
Windows will probably continue on forever simply due to inertia but this "you have to have a web login to use your private computer" b.s. is going to turn off a lot of consumers, and this will be the watershed moment where Proton/Wine finally moves from 5, to 10 or 15% of users
Cloud-based profit. The "computer user" model is dead.
This is also just for activation which is not required to use Windows 11. I don't understand the extreme reactions to this. This isn't 2001 anymore.
They very likely foresee the demise of PC as a platform altogether and are trying their best to shepherd us into their other products.
Consider what our industry will look like once the surveillance as a service/enshittifcation that’s been implemented for windows is ported to those things.
Try switching away from the services I mentioned, and you’ll see why the strategy makes sense.
and you will like it. so says MS.
MS: "One way or another, you are creating an account so help me God."
My problem is that Windows fucks up my user name when I log in to my account when setting up a new machine. I drives me up the wall.
My name is Daniel. My name on my MS account is Daniel. When I log in to a new Windows machine, the fucking thing decides my user name, and therefore my user folder, is "Danie". This is NOT my name, it's a different name that is not mine and it makes my computer grating to use every time.
For some retarded reason, windows does not allow online account users to have a username longer than 5 chars, so it goes and truncates whatever the first name it gets back from the mothership when logging in. A local account does not have this issue.
Have they closed the double install trick?
1. Install once with ms account and activate.
2. Reinstall offline with local account.
3. It will be activated when you go back online.
I suspect the remote server remember your computer hardware generated guid
I believe once( this is an urban legend) a manufacturer in a middle income country considered going with Linux to save money and Microsoft flew out a sales rep next day to put a stop to it.
Microsoft likes it when you get a "deal" and buy a pro key for 10$. Whatever, you'll subscribe to half a dozen Microwave services ideally paying them 30$ to 40$ a month forever.
The last thing they want is you to try Linux.
However, I had the joy of watching multiple Linux desktop environments crash when I switched to my Bluetooth headphones.
Cinnamon and Budgie both crashed. No one knows why. I had to switch to Mate and then spend another 20 minutes trying to get it look ok.
No typical user wants to deal with this. They'd assume Linux doesn't work and move on.
Sometimes, while I do things on a browser, I get a BSOD, no warning.
Some mornings, usually when I left important work open and half finished the night before, my computer decides to do an update and all my open windows, tabs, reference documents etc are gone, as if someone came and cleared my workbench mid project and now I need to set up all my shit again from scratch.
My personal laptop is a 10 year old POS thinkpad T-something with Linux Mint. Biggest issue is I forget to properly shut it down, and to plug it in every now and then, and the shot battery runs down. Admittedly, the bluetooth is sometimes a little iffy, but I've spent 0 effort trying to resolve it. I just open the lid, and my computer is ready for me. Boots up in an instant and always in the state I left it in (unless I let the battery run down).
My new, modern, high spec, high ram, high-res laptop is easily an order of magnitude more frustrating to use than my linux shitbox laptop.
I quit my job, and bought the laptop from the company. It's getting a wipe this weekend and some flavour of linux, and the wife is getting it as a belated christmas gift. She's due an upgrade, and I decided she's ready to move to linux now.
However, on average Windows has less issues with compatibility, particularly on newer hardware. I had a laptop that had a brand new chip, and I pre ordered it so it arrived before the Linux support did.
I could never get Linux to work correctly. It eventually failed for unrelated reasons.
You have to test Linux on your hardware the day you get it. Some laptops will never work with Linux. You can argue the hardware oems are to blame, but that doesn't fix anything.
I'm actually hoping to get a really cheap used Thinkpad soon and experiment with Nix.
Linux has the reputation of being buggy and hard to fix, so some people don't put any effort in finding the solution, but windows has its fair share of issues too.
You have almost unlimited permutations of different distros, kernels, etc. Which combination will work for you ?
No one knows. Will the next kernel update bring relief? I will say when you get a Linux system working, it's the most productive experience you can have. Microsoft isn't constantly begging for more money.
non urban legend: Munich migrated whole city (15K computers) to Linux saving millions. Microsoft moved their German HQ to Munich to win back the contract, and year later city announced removing linux and going back to windows.
- Embedded IE making multi-version browser testing an absolute PITA
- Rolled out WGA and screwed up bulk-licensing and multi-tier/versioned licensing for cluster operations and emerging mobile hardware
- Allowed arbitrary code to be embedded in the registry
My next PC will be Linux.
Have I discovered KDE sooner, it wouldn't have taken me so long to make the switch.
I just hated all the other DE and 5 minutes with KDE, I was deeply in love.
As well has great resources in to Linux distributions.
The product today doesn’t feel like the product I worked on; I feel no connection to it, and every time I think that there’s nothing they could do to make me dislike it any more, Microsoft has another “hey, hold my beer and watch this” moment.
The problem with the old Microsoft this that it was run by engineers who didn’t understand user experience. The problem now is that it’s run by MBAs who dont care about users, just licenses.
What I don't get is why MS refuses to let you pay to avoid the circus - It's like a streaming service that only has the ad-financed tier!
I get that the people who care are a minority, but charging that minority a high purchase price for a just-the-os version of windows seems like easy money and would let them dodge all the badwill by presenting a choice.
Right now the official option is simply "suffer the circus or leave". It should at least be amended with "or pay".
Then upgrade and reboot until it deactivates, then it should let you fix it with your microsoft account... Once that happens, you can remove the microsoft account from your computer.
How do you all deal with (extended) family? This Christmas I spent time with my parents and the topic of Windows 11 came up again with all of its associated dark patterns.
What do you all do to help them out of this madness? Is Ubuntu/Fedora/etc the best option for seniors? My dad's entire career was in Silicon Valley 1.0 where Excel/Outlook was his bread and butter and feels married to Windows, but ever since leaving the workforce those skills are more of a hindrance than an asset.
Now that he's retired, he still uses Excel to plan vacations for example, but Windows is riddled with this BS and I am powerless to help him navigate this anti-consumer behavior. It's incredible that Microsoft is shooting their most loyal customers in the foot with this BS.
Do you all help your parents remotely? What kind of issues do you run into being your parents IT support?
For those of you who haven't already had to deal with today's 70 year old MCI sufferers and technology, it is already a complete shitshow, and that generation lived half their adult lives without mobile technology.
Imagine finding 12 renewing subscriptions to malwarebytes and other security suites. Or having to burn credit cards every month because they can no longer tell the difference between ads/scams and actual needs. Microsoft, of course, helpfully shovels those scams straight to them via the operating system now. The corporations of America have figured out that milking our elders is good for a quick buck, and it is in their interests to make sure no safety nets are in place. Once they are required, they'll game whatever that system is too.
It is all the control battles our parents fought with their parents over driving, but now it is about the phone/tablet/computer, but not being able to take the phone away as a practical matter because the (first) world expects everyone to have them.
SSO and recovery keys are a problem for proxy account administrators - especially with the banking and medical sectors which still rely solely on SMS. Sites such as login.gov won't allow multiple accounts to have the same phone number. So if both you and your parents need accounts for social security, you as the caregiver can't use your phone as the second factor for their account.
For added fun, many organizations, including banks and the US Government/various federal pension boards, refuse to recognize a power of attorney letter, either. The entire modern situation leaves caregiver children having to commit technical TOS violation/fraud/perjury just to get accounts reset or to (re)gain access to submit address changes.
Ouch! That's got to make things hard!
That's thankfully not a problem where I live. Here the problem is more that the banks might be a little over-eager to take agency away from seniors, since once they get a whiff of their grandson helping them with their banking and what not, they lock their account and claim to have broken their TOS or the law regarding not having other people control their account, and that if you want people to do that, you need that power of attorney.
Honestly, this is a lot better than the alternative of not being vigilant enough, and I'd honestly argue that it's better to let there be as little shame as possible in handing over your banking to your next of kind, so that when it starts getting really bad, it's not too late. But this obviously gets very individual very quickly. One senior will handle their banking just fine until their 105, while the next gets Alzheimer at 55, while the next starts to have to put a lot more effort into doing it right at 75, but they don't have any next of kin they can trust to not slowly empty their savings account once they get the power of attorney.
I dread the day I have to get more involved in their healthcare from afar, precisely because of the technology gap. The money grab from big-pharma is going to unrelenting
They click on the browser icon and that's all they ever use.
She switches it on, double-clicks the Firefox icon, and it opens up.
That's it. That's the whole thing. I did originally have it set to just launch Firefox full screen on startup, but she didn't like it like that.
> That's it. That's the whole thing. I did originally have it set to just launch Firefox full screen on startup, but she didn't like it like that.
I don’t know why, but I immediately thought of the cake mix that was created that originally included egg powder so you just had to add water but people didn’t feel like they were really baking so they removed it and have you add eggs which made people happy and it became super popular.
Something about not wanting Firefox to just open automatically and wanting to double click it instead gave me the same vibes haha.
As much as Windows is deeply flawed, the user interface challenges with Linux are difficult to overcome. Until there is a version of Linux where you don’t have to open the console, Windows will keep its market.
This is already the case from the Grandma use case, i.e. nothing more than a web browser and maybe Thunderbird and an office program. The terminal issue doesn't come up until you start getting into people who know just enough to be dangerous (myself included).
The larger issue is that computers with Linux pre-installed are (within a rounding error) not a thing, and thus Grandma can't go out and buy one. Telling her to install it on her current computer makes about as much sense to her as asking her to flob the nerfwhizzle. And even if she could, would she place her bets on a (to her) completely new computer system? Not without help or solid recommendations from trusted sources.
Maybe Windows back in e.g. Windows 2000 days would have some sort of claim to user interface discoverability and predictability which no Linux distribution would have. That ship has sailed; Windows today is a shitshow.
The mom and dad gen are all on iPads or just phones from what I can tell. Very few people there use PCs for their personal computing (work is another matter, but mostly not relevant to this discussion), and those that do are more power user-y. This group largely don't need help beyond edge cases in my experience.
The grandma and grandpa generation are mostly the same story, but there's a lot more who have more or less just bailed completely outside of the absolute essentials (online banking, literal phone calls). Some are still on PCs out of a desire to not change things too much, but I'd imagine switching them over to an iPad is probably an overall improvement once you can get past the unwillingness to shift over to another system. The fact that Windows 11 is such hot garbage will hopefully aid in convincing people of that.
For those who still want a PC, there's Linux. My grandma is on Mint, but that's just because I'm her personal tech support. If I weren't around, she'd have bought a Windows 11 machine from whatever idiot at the local electronics store. I can't imagine that would have gone very well. She'd have probably bailed completely on computing if it came to that.
Very few people in this group of people need software beyond what basic Linux can provide, so Linux should be able to provide a better environment than Windows, but that are loads of potential edge cases, but they're all very small, but all very annoying if you find yourself in one.
> What kind of issues do you run into being your parents IT support?
Mom and Dad: 'Hey, can you help me with this website?' -> 'It's broken, try again tomorrow.' or 'Try that button there.'.
Grandma: See previous.
'How do I do [thing that hasn't changed since Windows 95]'?
'What do I do here?' -> 'Read the message on the screen and act accordingly.'
'My mouse doesn't work!' -> 'Check the batteries.'
Most of these later issues are because she treats the computer mechanistically, one unchanging step at a time, so if anything doesn't go to plan, she functionally panics. I don't know how to solve this problem, but it seems endemic to me given how common of a trope it is in stories from computer savvy people helping the not-so-savvy.
I can't remember where I heard about it, but it probably comes from the fact that a large-ish portion of the population can't connect concepts to things that don't have tangible forms. Thus, all the invisible processes inside any computer (files, memory, networking) that any computer savvy person will be aware of, don't exist and don't make sense in the mind of the not computer savvy, since it has no tangible form. You can find a similar case with office phone systems. Transferring a call is apparently hard for a number of people, since a call isn't a tangible item, doing anything with it makes zero sense. At best you can get them to place calls on hold, but that's only because their office phone will have buttons with blinking lights that say 'Line 1' and 'Line 2' on them, and they can thus easily connect the light blinking with the call on hold. Suddenly it's tangible, and thus it can make sense.
The more time I spend online the more I'm convinced I have never had a unique experience.
Thankfully, I don't have to deal with this every couple of days. Dad rarely ventures outside of his comfort zone, so needing to help him with some website is a very rare occurrence. Grandma is mostly fine so long as absolutely nothing changes. While they don't change every day, they do change every so often, in ways that I have to really focus to even see sometimes, but which apparently instantly throw her of her trail (while at the same time she's incapable of reading an error message that takes up a fairly large portion of her screen! I'm baffled to this day, but there's nothing that can be done about it). If her online bank and the few other services she rarely interacts with never change in even the slightest way for the next 20 years, I'd imagine I'd never need to be her tech support again, barring the batteries in her mouse dying again, or her computer itself kicking the bucket.
Sure, it sucks about the phone activation thing, but frankly... STOP USING WINDOWS ALREADY.
I happily paid $500 for a perpetual VS2026 license just a few days ago, but I'll continue to use things like massgrave for windows no matter how big my cash pile grows. I know it's the same company, but it's really not about the money. It's about sending some kind of a message regarding software quality.
If you could give me an experience identical to VS on Linux I would move in an instant. But it simply doesn't exist. It's frankly not even close after all these years. VSCode is like the IDE "we have at home". Linux is a great target for many things now (e.g., steam deck), but using it as my daily driver development platform is still a non-starter.
I know it's possible to make anything work on Linux, but that's not a very compelling argument for me anymore. It's got to work well. The experience can't suck ass. Even the steam deck was a herky jerky OOBE with WiFi/networking woes and 5-6 reboots to get it going. That's with Gabe Newell ~in charge using billions of dollars to make it go smoothly. I don't have access to those kinds of resources so I figure why even try. I've already thrown ~5k hours into the Linux hole over my lifetime. I don't think it's an investment that has paid off very well for me. Linus himself has acknowledged that the win32 ABI is the most stable and well designed he's ever seen. Why wouldn't I follow his advice?
Relearning things like hotkeys for step [in/out/over] is a nonstarter. I don't really have patience to customize a complex tool like VS or Rider. I've made a point of getting comfortable with the default settings so that no employer or client can ruffle my feathers with locked down machines, etc. You can put me on a completely vanilla windows+VS dev box in an air gapped environment and I would be as happy as a clam.
I guess mildly privacy concious gamer was not one of target their demographics.
God these companies are insufferable.
I spent $1000 on a Macbook Air, it instantly works with zero headache, has way more app support than Linux, is super fast, and so on.
If I want to play games, I bought the cheapest gaming laptop from Best Buy for like $500 a few years ago and only use that computer to play games.
Mint is very similar to Windows UI
i do feel the ecosystem isn't broad enough for linux to become consumer facing. E.g., if you buy a random chinese made writing tablet and tried using it on linux, it has less than even chance of working straight out the box.
Similarly with bluetooth, wifi (for laptops), etc.
The problem is that OEM are locked into windows, so you have the chicken/egg problem where OEM won't want to spend effort on linux compatibility without a large customer base, and customer base won't grow unless they know for sure it is always going to work for _any_ piece of hardware they might purchase.
May be steam machine and valve could be the push it needs to establish a large customer base.
My mother doesn't need to worry about typing `chmod` into her android mobile terminal.
I've been doing experiments over the last 10 or so years, I've been borrowing my Linux laptops to people, and to my surprise, they had absolutely no problem using it. Especially children, you just start using GNOME as if it's nothing. They are already used to different phones, different kinds of computers, it really makes no difference to them. Your mother is probably checking gmail, watching youtube, and maybe writing google docs, not much else.
Condescending.
My mother shouldn't need to mess with udev rules to play music to her Bluetooth Speaker because she uses a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard.
She also doesn't want to hang about waiting for systemd to shutdown X out of Y retries when she turns off the desktop because the bluetooth speaker had gone awol.
She also uses a wacom tablet which requires more configuration. Windows provides Plug & Play, and then works. Linux provides Plug & Play with lumps requiring configuration outside of a USB stick.
Can we stop pretending that linux is perfect and in a state for non-techies to swap over? It's potential but still not suitable for the average user. Watching streaming services natively isn't possible without some sort of a hack.
I do it for a job, I don't want to be further support for her outside of. She's an 70-year old illustrator so Photoshop is a must. Her friends who are in their 50's are the same. Linux even after retraining wouldn't gel with them.
Krita, GIMP, are not alternatives for her. Heck, she even maintains her own website.
My father is a historian. He has archives of history stuff bottled away on applications that are not *nix. Yes Wine is suitable for that but that again another set of obstacles.
I’ll be upgrading to Win 11 and activating it with an internet connection. And I won’t think twice about it.
People who complain that Windows isn't what they want are missing the point. Windows isn't for you. macOS, Linux, and more obscure choices still exist for general purpose computing. SteamOS or various Steam focused Linux distros exist for gaming. ChromeOS exists as a less offensive and more reliable thin OS.
Trying to force Windows into being something it isn't is a waste of your time.
The quote is usually delivered as a punchline of sorts, but we're rapidly approaching a world where there truly will be only five computers. If you define a computer as a system capable of truly general purpose computing, and if you count the computers as systems each capable of operating truly independently of the others. The term "general purpose" needs the further qualification, that a great deal of power and political capital will be needed to have any say in what purpose one of these five computers will be put to, and it will then be forced on the other people who are forced to work with that computer.
One was laptop sound driver, the other was wifi motherboard driver.
Maybe next AAA stuff will start to target ARM and natively ARM OSes?
Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account
Even better, use the LTSC releases.