Windows isn't an OS, it's a bad habit that wants to become an addiction

Windows is at that awkward stage any global empire has to go through. Around one in five of the world population is a Windows user – 1.5 billion humans. Aside from the relatively small slice that Mac takes, everyone else is happy with smartphones, so until we make contact with credulous aliens, there are no new worlds for …

[Pascal Monett]

I'e already said this

But I'll repeat myself : the only reason I'm on Windows is because all my customers are.

I am around six years away from retirement: On that day, I swear to God I am setting up a Linux Mint machine in my home and I will transition everything I need or want to do to that machine until I can reformat my Windows machine finally get rid of that bloated mess and once again have a Personal Computer.

Emphasis on "Personal".

[MyffyW]

Re: I'e already said this

I do think we've lost sight of quite how revolutionary a "personal" computer was (and indeed still is). The ability to choose, to change and to vote with your feet and your purse is a powerful incentive to genuine* innovation.

[*Generative AI is not innovation]

[Robert_lecomber]

Re: I'e already said this

there are things to consider about windows that I feel most people don't 1) never has Microsoft said that windows was far superior in one area I have always know it to be a jack of all trades os so it caters for vast pool of people 2) if you don't want additional programs there are debloatware programs to get rid of them 3) some people are reluctant to install a Linux diatro for example because of its problems playing anti cheat games or game pass games so until these issues get resolved windows 4) proton on linux is a joke and needs a rework as used Linux myself for a while as the leading alternative (apparently) proton system is a joke as even if you select the right proton for some games require a run command also for a games launcher and a average gamer is not going to wanna mess about with that. So in Conclusion if these issues aren't sorted on linux a vast majority will stay on windows

[graemep]

Re: I'e already said this

So Windows for gaming and a few other niches and Linux as general purpose?

[Roland6]

Re: I'e already said this

That also probably Xbox Windows not PC Windows.

[Caspian Prince]

Re: I'e already said this

Linux for gaming *as well*. Works great (thanks Valve).

[ecofeco]

Re: I'e already said this

Point 2 was the only one you got right.

And if people are letting games dictate their life, well, they are not serious people and nobody cares if they keep making poor choices in life.

[Derezed]

Re: I'e already said this

“And if people are letting games dictate their life, well, they are not serious people and nobody cares if they keep making poor choices in life.”

I’ll counter this with the fact that most people’s lives aren’t defined by their chosen PC OS.

The only reason I have Windows on my PC is gaming, because Linux doesn’t support games I want to play.

Give me a PC where I can play my steam library without Windows and I’ll change…until then this poor choice stays.

[Sudosu]

Re: I'e already said this

Proton on Steam is pretty good these days, though I have not tried any recent AAA games on it.

I even got EA Origin running under Steam at one point, but haven't played those games in a long time.

[Derezed]

Re: I'e already said this

Genuine thank you. Despite the Linux community simultaneously navel-gazing about why people don't adopt their chosen OS while shouting at anybody who asks a question below the level of complexity of "how do I get my electrons on my CPU to perform a Salsa in 4D space" (that kind of cognitive dissonance over decades takes commitment), I might have to give this a go. I will probably regret it, but I genuinely want Windows out of my personal life.

[Richard 12]

Re: I'e already said this

The computer is the thing you use to run the software you want to run.

For the vast majority of people, that software is now a web browser (often under an Electron blanket) and games.

99% of the world doesn't care what the OS is called, just that it runs their software.

Gaming is now very nearly the only reason desktops still exist. So if you like having a desktop PC running Linux, thank the gamers.

[werdsmith]

Re: I'e already said this

Exactly. I run desktop PCs with Windows and Linux. I also use a Mac. They all do their jobs well and the criticisms I read on Register forums about Windows are unrecognisable in my every day normal use, in fact many are bullshit and misconceptions. Similarly, the darling golden child Linux has problems that are dismissed and overlooked here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'e already said this

I run Windows at work, Linux at home, and do support for my wife's Macbook. Windows is garbage. Just yesterday I had a program get "stuck" in Software Center insisting it needed a reboot... even after 3 reboots. Updates happen when Microsoft feels like it, not when I get to choose. (Ok, one small part of that is the corporate install, but only one.) Sudden, apparently random changes to the interface. AI getting pushed to the machine whether we like it or not. "Administrator" access means the computer will give you "access denied" messages if it feels like it. And it's SO SLOW! You need a jet-powered machine just to boot Windows. All for free! Wait, no, that's Linux. All for a very large fee.

And then there's the software. Word can't handle big files. (5+ minutes to load some of our work docs!) Excel can't open 2 workbooks with the same name. And Teams? Ugh! Didn't we stop using one-window-at-a-time interfaces when Win95 came out?

Mac is fairly solid, and does a pretty good job, both hardware and software. The decision to suddenly drop anything 32-bit was alienating, though; an entire library of software that no longer works because Apple said no. And support? The "Oh-Gee"neus bar's idea of troubleshooting is to connect a cable and read you what appears on the screen. Had them insist my hard drive had failed, the reboot after a major update, despite me successfully copying everything off of it. Their diagnostic program (they showed it to me) came back with the single-word response "FAILED". Computer says no.

Compare to Linux. (I'm specifically thinking of Ubuntu, but undoubtedly true of other distros.) MUCH faster on the same hardware, no AI, asks politely if it's ok to install updates, will obey (possibly with an "are you sure", but still obeys) whatever root tells it to. Ok, so the interface changes some every few versions, but less than Windows. (And you can pick your interface, too.) And it's free, to boot. And comes with software that is significantly faster and less resource-hungry than Microsoft's, and typically with fewer bugs. (Not bug-free, nothing is, but fewer bugs.) And can often (not always, and not always perfectly, but often) run Windows software through Wine - often with better performance than on Windows. As for support, hop on a mailing list and ask a question - you may well get one of the major maintainers answering it! (Thanks, Kenneth Loafman of Duplicity!)

Which of these, told from my personal experience, are "bullshit and misconceptions"?

[albegadeep]

Re: I'e already said this

(Too late to edit, so replying.)

And the Apple stuff is eye-wateringly expensive, and looks like it's going to have AI shoehorned into it too.

A co-worker who runs Windows at home has said several times that the only reason he does is because anticheat software rejects any clients using Wine to run games. That's not a limitation of Linux, that's laziness on the game developer's part. (Anticheat software, like DRM in the bad old days, is only guaranteed to work on the developer's machine. Any other machine may prevent the software from running, even if there's nothing actually wrong with what the user has done.) If it wasn't for that, he wouldn't have a Windows machine.

[werdsmith]

Re: I'e already said this

Read the first paragraph and your question. Answer: virtually all of them

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'e already said this

Care to answer it yourself? I stand by what I said, and gave a number of examples as to how Windows performs in a very inferior manner to both MacOS and Linux.

[bufferDuffer]

Re: I'e already said this

well said... techno snobs rule the comments section here though so you'll get scant support for your view

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'e already said this

I'm the AC who replied to the same post. I'm quite willing to listen to others' views, but I expect there to be something more to them than "____ good, m'kay". Of course Linux isn't perfect, but I find it far more usable and reliable than Windows. As for being called a "techno snob", my usual reply is "Take my (free) Lexus for a test drive before you dismiss me for dissing your (expensive) Pinto."

[FIA]

Re: I'e already said this

And if people are letting games dictate their life, well, they are not serious people and nobody cares if they keep making poor choices in life.

This seems very judgemental.

How do you unwind?

Oh... shit... it's Golf isn't it.... sorry. :(

[hittitezombie]

Re: I'e already said this

Reading, cycling and other hobbies are available.

[werdsmith]

Re: I'e already said this

And if people are letting games dictate their life, well, they are not serious people and nobody cares.

I think exactly that about people who feel the need to be sanctimonious about operating systems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'e already said this

Jesus, man, try some commas occasionally. Pause for breath.

[RegGuy1]

Active White Space

I learned decades ago about the power of active white space: use newlines, asterisks (ie bullet points) and if the medium allows it, indentation, to manage the flow of text. You don't need much, too much dilutes the effect, but using paragraphs and bullet points to bring out key information it can transform a block of text into a feast of information.

Layout the text so:

* It leads the eye down the page;

* makes it easy to find key points;

* lets you organise your thoughts in a clear way.

White space: it costs nothing but can do a great deal more.

*** For FREE *** :-)

[BTW, this is *especially* true for code.]

[blu3b3rry]

Re: I'e already said this

What games are you running?

Not found an issue with just about anything via Proton on Steam so far from old GTA titles to Cyberpunk 2077. All running nicely on Ubuntu 24.04.

[el_oscuro]

Re: I'e already said this

I have installed on my System 76: Starfield, Indiana Jones, Planet Coaster, XCOM2, Control, The Expanse, Subnatica, and a lot of others. Some I haven't played much. Others I have over 1,000 hours on. All on Linux. Without any issues at all.

[Sudosu]

Re: I'e already said this

Have you tried getting the Epic, Blizzard or EA App launchers to run under Steam\Proton by any chance?

I had Origin added as a game under Steam on Ubuntu and it worked fine, but that was a while back.

There was one workaround I had to do for "ping" (aka latency) to show in some of the older networked games.

I did hear rumors of some people getting their accounts blocked by EA early on, but that was running EA games they bought on Steam under Steam\Proton.

That was fixed a few years back.

Most of my gaming now is Steam or Epic so I would be interested to know if someone has a creative workaround or two.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'e already said this

Don't Microsoft fanbois get taught basic grammar and paragraph construction these days?

P.S. A system with software trying to emulate another OS is not crap if it's emulation isn't perfect. That's apples and oranges.

If all games were written natively for Linux, they'd be better, and proton or windows wouldn't be needed. That scenario wouldn't actually make windows any more crappy that it is now, though by your logic it would.

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: I'e already said this

Why wait for retirement? Do it now so it will all be up and running on the day that you call it time on your job.

I gave windows the middle finger for personal use in 2008 but didn't retire until 2016. While I use Linux for many things, I use a MacBook with MacOS as my daily workhorse.

Windows is now a distant memory for me and given the regular reports here on the never ending shit show that MS is determined to turn it into, I don't regret it one little bit.

[Pascal Monett]

There's this little niggling little detail called '"work". When you're a self-employed freelancer, you don't work nine-to-five, you work until your customers stop asking you for urgent things to get done.

Then you invoice them and you get paid.

I don't have time to eduate myself on this transition now, but when I'm retired I will have all the time in the world and, by God, I will get it done.

[Steve Channell]

Windows has reached cockroach status

Fresh talk of Linux on the desktop is misplaced... the boat sailed when 64-bit migration happened with Windows-7. Even the polished turd that was Windows-8 couldn't displace Windows.

The next Microsoft OS is likely to be called something like "Frame", built on a hyperlight Rust micro-kernel/hypervisor with Windows and Linux sub-systems, it might ervev be open source

[ComicalEngineer]

Re: I'e already said this

Ditto, only because several of my customers are wedded to Word / Excel. I also have one legacy CAD program which will only run under Windows

I tried Ubuntu about 15 years ago but was not overly keen on the new interface and swapped to Mint which I'm still using. I bought a cheap Fujitsu Q520 i7 and put a SSD in it with 8GB of RAM. It does almost everything I need work wise (I'm not a gamer) except for my CAD program.

I have been usingOpen / Libre Office for over 20 years and the current iteration deals with .docx files very well except for some odd formatting. I find Libre Office easier to use than any version of Word after 2003 (I.e those with the bl**dy ribbon) and LO makes smaller and better PDFs than Word. Some of my documents are 100+ pages long with tebles, pictures and drawings imported from my CAD package. LO has taken everything I've thrown at it without any bother.

I am counting down to retirement and currently have less than 18 months until I pull the plug.

Edited to Add that today M$ threw me another full screen "end of support" nag to upgrade a PC that doesn't have a TPM to Win 11.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'e already said this

I use Macs at home and Linux and a few in the company have just switched to Macbooks, but sadly we still have to use Teams and Outlook - and new Outlook on any platform has become a complete menace.

It is very, very, VERY clear that in the years past we would not have even granted that the moniker 'beta'. It is so massively deficient in key features that its release MUST have been a ploy to demonstrate to shareholders just how locked in Microsoft victims clients really are, because no sane company would deem this acceptable for use.

Yet we have to. It's rammed down our throat. I'm glad I'm a few years from retirement too because it's becoming very, very irritating. Windows is the Tesla of the IT world: a lot of bs about innovation but in reality made as cheap as possible - and the truly competent know.

[dahle llama]

Re: I'e already said this

I use PWA (Progressive Web Apps) of Teams, Outlook, and other M365 apps on my Linux box for work. I just installed Edge for Linux on my Mint PC and then used it for all my M365 PWA's. I have been using it since 2019 and my co-workers haven't noticed a difference.

[trindflo]

Re: I'e already said this

Do we stop at evicting Windows from living rent-free in our heads? Maybe evict alphabet too and go back to uucp, or is that a bridge too far?

[Probie]

Re: I'e already said this

Mine is slightly different:

"The only reason I'm on Windows is because my wife is. hard core office excel junkie and hates using the SasS Browser version of anything."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'e already said this

In fairness, the SaaS version of Office really is a lot worse than the installed version!

[hittitezombie]

Re: I'e already said this

Not sure, at least it's got a less chance of corrupting a Powerpoint or Excel file being shared via Sharepoint.

Oh I really hate O365 framework.

Disclaimer: I am a Linux on Desktop guy since late 90s, and have been using Linux/UNIX since early 90s. Current work device is a Mac book. Everything else in the house is Linux.

[Adair]

Windows and I...

parted company in 2008. Wiped the Hard Disk clean and installed Mandrake, then Ubuntu, and finally Mint, with various side excursions into other distros along the way. But, before the big wipe, there was a period of experimenting on a laptop, while Windows continued on the desktop. At that time it wasn't actually Windows I was really fed up with, it was the money grubbing apps upgrade merry-go-round that caused me to snap and get serious about finding a worthwhile alternative ecosystem.

For all Linux's failings, and there are many, just as there are within the Windows hegemony, I have no regrets. The 'Linux hegemony' is a far more agreeable ecosystem to live in, at least from my point of view. For anyone thinking of changing horses I would support Rupert's advice: to take your time getting up to speed on your new chosen system, before finally leaving behind the rotting hulk that 'Windows' surely has become.

[BobChip]

Re: Windows and I...

It was Windows 8 (2012, I think) that did it for me. It deprecated several very expensive peripherals - film scanner etc.. - which I then found, to my enormous surprise and astonishment, were perfectly well supported by Ubuntu. I started out on dual boot, but within a few months the boot logs told me that I was no longer using Windows at all. Now I work entirely in Linux, and have never had any cause to regret it.

I was not "persuaded or drawn" to switch to Linux. Microsoft FORCED me to jump. Probably the only thing for which I am ever going to be genuinely grateful to Microsoft.....

It is by no means an OS landslide, but I find myself increasingly working in partnership with other designers and businesses who have also switched to Linux. More significantly, none of them have gone back to Microsoft.

[navarac]

Re: Windows and I...

I started using Linux Mint on a spare laptop at the start of the Pandemic, when I had more time to myself! After about 3 months I found I was using Linux far more than Windows, and by 6 months I was hardly using Windows except for the odd game. 6 years on and the Windows PCs (3) have all been long purged of the scam that is Windows. I feel Windows is no longer an OS. It is a marketing vehicle to extract more and more cash and data out of its users. It has become a "Total App" and has no place on my systems. With Linux, I spend no time fighting a Windows system that every week installs a flawed update, or an unwanted bloat package gets added. My commiserations to those poor souls who have to suffer Windows, as it seems to get worse and worse each and every weekly "update" (update in quotes as it is anything but). Obviously Microsoft is totally deaf to its users.

[BingsDead]

Re: Windows and I...

I am happy enough with macos.

I have a 92 year old father on windows.

My reservation on moving him to Linux ia is there an upgade problem every 3 years?

I have an 18 year old on windows.

He only really plays minecraft. Needs a computer for engineering/computers. He has a laptop windows 11. And desktop windows 10. So maybe switch the desktop when security updates stop.

[Sudosu]

Re: Windows and I...

The update cycles on most of the distros are far better than they used to be.

Ubuntu LTS used to cause me much grief but I have been through two upgrades now without problems...but upgrades are always a risk for any OS.

Debian is supposed to be pretty stable for release upgrades, but I have only been wiping and installing for those machines.

[amacater]

Re: Windows and I...

Depends on the Linux - I use Debian on a daily basis and have walked people through upgrades from one version of Debian to the next. Debian has an approximate two year release cycle with one further year of support - so that's your three years plus a fairly well organised way to upgrade to the next major version. Ubuntu LTS versions work similarly - you should always be able to move from one Ubuntu LTS to the next.

Disclaimer: I have >25 years of experience with Linux and use it as my primary operating system everywhere I can.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fixed your headline for you

Windows isn't an OS, it's a bad habit that wants to become an addiction you need to kick

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Fixed your headline for you

Fair enough, but most addictions are fun! At least to start with. Not sure I would even call my favourite (98SE) fun...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Fixed your headline for you

You too? I kept on with 98SE for many years, eventually as a file converter for stuff moving on/off my main Linux workstation. The 64-bit era finally killed it, but by then Linux was better at file conversion anyway.

[RedGreen925]

Re: Fixed your headline for you

"I kept on with 98SE for many years,"

That piece of junk is why I switched to linux going on twenty-six year ago coming up soon in June I guess it is from the release date just googled. That garbage left my Sound Blaster Awe 64 top of the line card unable to play any sounds except a midi file. Downgrading changed nothing even tried the 95 a, b and c. Was in the computer store looking to buy new card and seen this Redhat Linux I had been reading about. Bought it went home an install and a sndconfig later putting in the DMA and IRC settings and I had full sound once more. Which strangely enough I seem to like having on my computers, that was it for my daily use of that windows trash.

[hittitezombie]

Re: Fixed your headline for you

The main problem is the corporate and schools addictiion. Once that's broken things would be easier but no CTO will spend money to ditch Microsoft - it's iterally the IBM of our ages.

[wolfetone]

Why is this under "Opinion" when it should be under "Fact"?

[Flocke Kroes]

Price of windows

The cost of dumping Windows is different for everyone*. Microsoft are experts at setting their price a little below what the vast majority think their costs is. There are things you can do to prevent that cost from getting worse. Microsoft Office prefers to save files in their proprietary format. One of their tricks for forcing an upgrade was changing that format: old versions could not read files created by new versions of Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office can be convinced to save files in Open Document Format by default. The rest of the world will immediately thank you because Libre Office works perfectly with ODF but only occasionally with Microsoft's (not)Open XML. WHEN you decide Windows has become too expensive do you want all your documents trapped in Microsoft's encodings like a disk encrypted by malware or do you want them available in Libre Office immediately?

* For me it was a few Windows only games that did not work with WINE last millennium.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Price of windows

I've used LO to convert several book texts from Office format to PDF. None of the difficulties related to opening the docx files but to the way in which Word had been used -

tabs and spaces to lay out tables rather than tables,

tabs and spaces to put text beside images instead of wrapping rules,

large images allegedly cropped but just masked, bloating file size (unfortunately LO also does this).

Did I mention Comic Sans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Price of windows

F.Y.I. Libre Office works quite well on a WIN 10 (Hack cough spit) laptop, so much so that the lady for whom I installed it has not complained about it in the past year.

Also Thunderbird for email, and Firefox for web browsing.

Basically when WIN 10 goes belly-up, I think I will be able to install my favorite Linux, and perhaps she won't notice...

I assume the same would be true for the majority of home pc users.

[Anonymous Coward]

"everyone else is happy with smartphones"

Presumably a lot more than the 20%/1.5 billion Windows thralls? I wonder whether tablets are lumped together with smartphones?

That made me think of my use. I realised that these days I use a 254mm (10") Android tablet a lot more than a desktop. Mostly use a Linux† desktop for coding and document preparation / printing although I concurrently use the tablet to consult documentation (internet or ebook.)

Today the effectiveness of handwriting recognition is making writing first drafts on a larger 280mm/300mm tablet an attractive option especially if you use a markup base document preparation system like L^AT_EX or groff.

_{† any Unix/Linux provides what I require. It's Almalinux only because the last systems I supported were RHEL. Could easily be FreeBSD or OpenIndianna.}

[picturethis]

Split Personality...

About 5 years ago, I purged various windows OS versions from all of my hardware (5 physical machines) and kept one machine (offline) running Win 10 (for tax purposes). I have been using Linux for about 10 years (and using/developing on Windows since early 90's).

The transformation is just about complete. I will never use Win11 at home. Period. End of the line for me in October of this year. It's been a long time coming. Ever since MS pre-announced (before its first release) that Windows 10 would not allow optional updates and removed the concept of service packs, I saw the writing on the wall. Sorry MS, but I CONTROL my machine and I control when and who it talks to and when it gets updates - not you. It's my money, my data and my life, not for your taking.

I am a couple of years from retirement. (Software Engineer). Once I reach that, I will no longer need to develop or use any version of Windows ever again.

I prefer HI (human intelligence) over AI. Sorry MS, your attempt to monetize my life/personal data will not succeed. Go find some other source to feed your flawed business model.

For a while, systemd threw a wrench into my plans, but now with devuan and a couple of other distros, my path to conversion will be completed to my satisfaction.

MS can take Recall, WSL and AI and put it where the sun doesn't shine... What a freakin' security nightmare... I am wary of anything MS touches and Apple isn't any better (except they hide it better by calling it "security" - "walled garden" my a$$..).

[JWLong]

Re: Split Personality...

I retired from corporate in 2017, then went to work for my customers. I have to use Windows because all the software I use for hardware repair is based on windows.

I went to the pawnshop during covid and got a Chromebook dirt cheap and put Mint on it to school myself up on Linux.

The Windows laptop sets on the repair bench or travel's on site for work things only.

As of last summer corporate has decided that they will be moving away from Microsoft everything and have begun sales of their systems built on Linux.

Microsoft has put the noose around their own neck, and in a few years will feel the pain of their BS money grab slowly but surely. I hope they choke to death.

[JWLong]

Re: Split Personality...

Just as a side note here's a picture of the first computers I worked on.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Scorer_computer_1972.jpg

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Split Personality...

Here's my first one.

I was working shifts at the time, and what made this special was that it was portable and ran a few weeks on a 9V battery so I could mess with it in the breaks. It got me into programming, and eventually handcoded machine language (I found out about assemblers much later :) ).

Then I bought a printer (a 4 x 20 screen is not ideal to review code you write), and next I got a broken IBM PC XT clone which took a computer literate friend of mine about 30 minutes to fix, and the rest is history. And along the way I strayed into Linux about two years before the Internet acquired the WWW idea from one Sir Time Berners-Lee, so by the time that really took off I had my hands in just about every technology on it. Still twitching when I recall editing sendmail.cf by hand, though :).

[StrangerHereMyself]

Re: Split Personality...

The second best option would be for people just continuing to run Windows 10...FOREVER.

Or someone could cobble up a Windows XP version from the stolen source code and patch it if need be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Split Personality...

"kept one machine (offline) running Win 10 (for tax purposes)."

<joke> What kind of a deduction do you file for having to use Win10? Is it a big enough writeoff to be worth it? </joke>

[b0llchit]

Politics and adversaries

The current political climate will only speed up the decline of both Windows and Microsoft. Who wants computer software build to spy on you and feeds your information to shady "government" channels of black ops that will use any information against you.

[Julz]

Windows

Just say no.

[Version 1.0]

Re: Windows

If Microsoft still fully supported Windows 7 Professional and OneDrive then all users would be happy ... me too!

[David Hicklin]

Re: Windows

Have an upvote for windows 7 - M$ lost the plot after that

Until a few days ago I was still on win7 as my main laptop (!) , have a newer (refurbished) one with windows10 and the TPM "hidden" - Openshell for a win7 desktop, shutup10 and remove the crud after each update makes it useful along with office 2010 .

That will be the end of the line for windows here, I am retired now and the next one will be Linux, but then again us "consumers" are just small fry - its corporate with its lock in where the big money lies. At least I retired before my work laptop became windows 11.

[Aaiieeee]

Buy a second HDD

You can get a 250Gb M2 SSD for £30 so if you have a desktop buy one and install a fresh Linux Mint. I don't like dual booting on the same HDD as its a faff and adds compexity.

After reading the recent article about Recall I decided to make the change but I'll be honest it takes effort to start using the Linux install as everything is already installed and easy to use on Windows. Some days its easier to just use the Windows install and do what needs to be done. Its a journey so it'll come together eventually.

I will keep the windows install as I use it for Steam and games but am fully bought into the idea of dropping Windows for every other use case.

https://www.ebuyer.com/2481301-crucial-e100-480gb-m-2-internal-ssd-ct480e100ssd8

[Joe W]

Re: Buy a second HDD

I only play DwarfFortress (I was part of many a merry community fort, back then, 15 years ago) and Widelands... no time for more games. I have a (valid, licensed) Win11 partition on my laptop, never booted into that. I have not used a Windows machine at home for the better part of three decades, after I stopped gaming that much. I used to like linux because it was fun tinkering with the system. Now I use Linux because it's no fun having to tinker with the system.

Work: yeah, stuck with Win11. Don't like it, for most actual work (coding and data analysis) I have a bunch of Linux machines I can dial into, other things are unfortunately Win only. OTOH, much like the much hated Win8 I can work with the system (or around it), one gets used to stuff, it's only work and I'm not the sysadmin. Especially as a COF (crusty old fart) that I am I have seen and used so many computer systems that it's all just... meh... not worth the effort to hate the stuff. Don't know why we all seem to love to do it. Too much effort, not good for my heart and mood, and I'd rather play "Forest Shuffle" or butcher some wood, carve one of the adorable "One-by" figurines by Doug Linker or do some gardening.

Or have one of these --->

(next round is mine)

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Buy a second HDD

" I used to like linux because it was fun tinkering with the system. Now I use Linux because it's no fun having to tinker with the system."

Nice one, Joe. It illustrates what happens to us as we get older, what happened to Windows as it got older and what happened to Linux as it matured.

[alain williams]

Starting points

The article had various starting points but it missed the most important: starting point 0 which is work out what you are trying to achieve.

This is not the same as what you are trying to do -- as that will often involve running some particular program, this might tie you to a particular operating system. Why do you run that program, are there others that achieve the same thing ? If it is specialist you are unlikely to find something that ticks all the boxes, but does it tick enough of them ?

Once you know spin up a new environment and move tasks over slowly. Most of it will be easy, the last 10% will be the challenge of distinguishing 'achieve' from 'do'.

The above is really aimed at el-Reg readers, IT types who have done this sort of thing professionally. For non techie people (think your retired dad) it is much simpler as what they want to achieve is usually simpler: web browsing, email, word processing, simple spreadsheets. For that I would suggest that Linux Mint will do nicely and just work after a bit of learning of the new appearance, layout and way of doing things.

Games: this can be the biggest show stopper.

[DoctorNine]

Re: Starting points

"..Games: this can be the biggest show stopper..."

This will change relatively quickly once people stop using Win11 by default. Plus, you can still do Linux already for a number of forward thinking games. The momentum is building to throw M$ in the lake.

[Shadowlight]

Re: Starting points

The Lady of the lake wouldn't like that...

[David 132]

Re: Starting points

Strange women lying in ponds building Linux distributions is no basis for an operating system. Supreme market share derives from a mandate from the users, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

[Boothy]

Re: Starting points

Re Games on Linux

If using Steam for games, Linux works well thanks to built in Linux support (native Linux Steam + Proton (aka Valves game tweaked Wine) for the Windows games).

I've been dual booting Linux (Mint) and Windows 10 for about 2.5 years now. I've not had a single game I've gotten via Steam that hasn't 'just worked' on Linux in all that time.

A few examples of recent and/or popular games I've got via Steam, that all run fine in Linux: Baldur's Gate 3, Atomfall, Satisfactory, Oblivion Remastered, Ghost of Tsushima, Star Wars Outlaws, Cyberpunk 2077, AC Mirage, Pacific Drive, etc etc.

The only game I still have installed under Windows, is MS Flight Sim, hmm, winder why that doesn't play nice under Proton! Plus a heavily modified version Fallout 4, but that's only so my Linux install of Fallout 4 remains nice and clean.

Even other stores can be used, such as Epic Games, EA, Ubisoft, GOG etc, although these take a little more effort, and need tools like Lutris (others are available).

The only real caveat to note is competitive games, some of these use quite invasive anti-cheat systems, some of which don't work via Proton (or regular Wine). So if you play these type of games, check first before jumping to Linux (or just dual boot).

To check out specific games, have a look on Proton DB. It shows Steam Deck and Desktop Linux compatibility.

[Yankee Doodle Doofus]

Re: Starting points

I am running MS Flight Sim (40th Anniversary Edition) via Proton on both a Steam Deck and a custom built linux box. Works like a charm!

[Boothy]

Re: Starting points

TBH it's probably been 2 years since I tried to move it to Linux, and it was just being a pain (not launching etc), so I just left it on the Windows install.

I'll no doubt try again at some point.

Assuming it does work, I'll likely wipe the Windows drive at that point and install a fresh Arch Linux on there for a bit of testing (Or maybe Steam OS if that's properly available for desktops by then!).

[Toastan Buttar]

Re: Starting points (music-making software)

For me, any flavour of Linux has been a non-starter so far. This is because I have a completely virtual home recording studio running on a Windows 10 desktop box.

Almost all of the top-drawer musical applications and hardware have issues when trying to install or run on Linux.

Out of the mainstream DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations), only Reaper and Bitwig have decent native support for Linux. I settled on Reason (Windows / Mac only) as my weapon of choice many years ago, and it would be a real blow to lose the internal 'devices' which I have made integral to my workflow.

Mainstream VSTs / Plug-ins are another area which simply don't have much in the way of Linux support, either. The big names in the field like Arturia, G-Force, Cherry Audio, Native Instruments and u-he simply don't provide native builds or installation software for Linux. Some people have managed to create workarounds so that they can install using the appropriate Windows installer under Wine, but it seems to be touch-and-go whether it will work at all, or if a working solution gets broken by the latest update. On Windows, it's (pretty much) a trouble-free process, and most of the big-name companies have decent support departments and user forums.

Finally, even when you're running all your instruments, effects and recording 'devices' in software, the input and output sides of the studio (keyboards, knob boxes, audio I/O, MIDI I/O) require real hardware. Once again, finding a way to get hardware boxes to play nicely with Linux is a bit of a crap shoot. Sometimes it will be genuine seamless plug-and-play, while at other times you can be trawling through forums for literally weeks. By contrast, if hardware devices have a Windows installer, then you're (pretty much) home-and-dry.

Yes, my situation is a corner case and has no bearing on those who perform 'generic' tasks with a PC. But Linux is currently a very bad fit for hosting a virtual home studio. I'm content to put up with the slight grubbiness of the 'Windows Experience' for my day-to-day computing needs in order to have a smooth experience when I'm relaxing with my creative hobby.

[DvorakUser]

Re: Starting points (music-making software)

I understand why you've stuck with Windows - it's the OS that lets you do what you want and need to with the least hassle. Have you looked into Ubuntu Studio, though (]https://www.ubuntustudio.org/)? It may be a better match for you than trying to build up a standard desktop Linux into a workstation.

Sorry for the clunky text link - haven't bothered looking up how to put actual hyperlinks on here yet since I don't post much

[anthonyhegedus]

My company supports a number of small businesses and they all use windows with a very small handful of exceptions. They all need apps which only run on Windows (like Sage or Autocad), or facilities which only run in Windows (like Sharepoint or Onedrive) or have a need to keep using MS Office because let's face it, LibreOffice can't always cope with the formatting. Also, they may be using hardware like a specialist plasma cutter, or a large format printer for which there are only drivers in Windows.

I would love to be able to switch these customers over to Linux but it's just too daunting a task with little possibility of success. We could save our customers hundreds in licensing. However, they'll still need cloud storage services, which may end up costing as much as the MS licensing did in the first place. And WE still need to make a profit.

MS have us and our customers in a headlock.

[Paul Crawford]

Longer term those hardware specialities will be a problem for Windows as well when new drivers for the recent incarnation of Windows cease to be developed. Being able to put those machines on an isolated VLAN, etc, and using the IoT versions of Windows so less demands on networking and other crap would allow some use and safety once the OS goes out of support.

At the end of the day you pay your money/privacy/sanity and you take your choice. For me it is only a few special CAD packages for old days I need, and they run in VMs OK (including older versions of Office) so I use Linux as my first choice these days.

Linux still sucks, but the taste of donkey balls is far less...

[Doctor Syntax]

"However, they'll still need cloud storage services"

Why? What's magic about storing data on somebody else's computer that they don't control?

[Doctor Syntax]

Let me enlarge on that. If you want some form of service for shared storage you have, of course, run and SMB server on prem. You can also run a WebDav server (e.g. NextCloud) instead which, depending on the care you take, be rather less easily hit then an SMB server if you have the misfortune to be hit with malware.* If you don't want to run a NextCloud server you can find a number of services who will run one for you without having to deal with a mega-corp.

* The semantics of storing data on an SMB server are similar to those of a local drive - that's the point of SMB. The semantics of WebDav are different so assuming you don't also but unnecessarily expose the server via SMB the malware shouldn't be able to install itself on the server and as the v of Webdav stands for "versioning" you should be able to get your last version back.

[Sudosu]

If you are using an SMB server or, internet storage service, make sure it is one with a ZFS back end.

I've had customers get hit with ransomware, and once the source of the intrusion was secured it was a couple button clicks (or commands) and 2 seconds to roll back to a known good\safe snapshot of the data.

Data loss was restricted to that which was stored while the intrusion source was dealt with. This was minimized by communications to the staff on what was happening and what to or not to do.

Other systems took weeks to try and get back, if they were even recoverable from backups.

[Cruachan]

Training costs are what will keep anyone from moving. Even in IT, I've seen several companies over the last few years desperate to leave VMware given that their new overlords are taking the piss with licensing costs only to decide at the last minute that either there are features in VMware that the alternatives don't provide or they'll get too much staff pushback and it'll cost too much to retrain them on something new.

Most of the Mac users I encounter are using them for no reason other than they can say they are Mac users (same as how all iPhone users always say iPhone and not phone), although there are always users with legitimate reasons as well, there are apps that work much better on Macs for example or (rarely) don't have Windows versions.

[Paul Crawford]

Sadly every new version of Windows and/or Office plays "hide the useful feature" so you still have major training costs.

[ecofeco]

This.

[Cruachan]

True, there are always a few (take your Focused Inbox and fuck right off Microsoft) but at least the major features and their keyboard shortcuts don't get moved.

This is also something that generally gets covered in "on the job" training or is handled by IT, rather than actually needing to send people on courses or getting trainers in, which is an expense the beancounters will actually see unlike IT time which they think is free and infinite.

[Doctor Syntax]

"Training costs are what will keep anyone from moving."

Every release Microsoft will foist a new UI on users just because they can. Either a company has a choice of paying to retrain users or taking a productivity hit while users fumble their way around.

I strongly suspect that because the latter doesn't show up as a line in the accounts it's the preferred option. So this excuse comes down to the company being run by beancounters being prepared to take a hidden periodic productivity hit rather than pay a one-off training fee for a UI that can then remain stable for years or even decades*.

* At first glance the UI on the laptop in front of me might be mistaken for the Windows UI from the beginning of the century.

[JimmyPage]

And yet desktop Linux

is still as elusive as a Brexit benefit, with it's uptake of 0.01%

Even my last outfit - which had 50 servers on Debian, all the 100 or so desktops were Windows.

[Paul Crawford]

Re: And yet desktop Linux

I don't care what others use, I'm happy being in that small percent of Linux desktop users.

What I do insist on is if a fried or family member wants me to support them then it is also a Linux desktop they get. So far no real issues, a few minor complaints once about software for kids not being supported, but then I no longer have the "wipe and reinstall after infection in spite of AV" experience that used to be a biannual ritual...

[StrangerHereMyself]

Re: And yet desktop Linux

You're wrong. Linux is already approaching the 5% the desktop. And that's in addition to being dominant in the server space.

[JimmyPage]

Re: And yet desktop Linux

"already approaching the 5% "

and it only took (checks notes) 25 years.

At that rate it could be 10% in 2050.

Lot of low energy commentards these days. They seem to take statements of fact as an attack on their world view.

Ironically I am typing this on a Linux desktop machine that I have had in various incarnations for (checks notes) 20 years. And in that time, despite begging, pleading, and demonstrating immediate and significant costs savings, not a single BigCorp I have worked for has bitten.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Just passed my tenth anniversary of using Mint full time and I absolutely know I will never be touching Windoze again.

Blender, Darktable, GIMP, Resolve, Emacs and the occasional bit of Libre Office are my commonly used applications and they all work a treat.

Mint (as I'm sure is the case with the other distros) just gets out of your way and lets you get stuff done. Honestly, I mostly forget that I'm even using Linux because I'm too busy using the applications.

Now that's the mark of a good OS.

[45RPM]

Commodore64? How dare you! The ZX Spectrum is much better!

[Andy Non]

Oh how very posh and over the top. Real developers use a ZX81.

(Waiting for someone to come along promoting valve based computing...)

[The Dark Side Of The Mind (TDSOTM)]

My grandfather used a mainframe built with discrete bipolar transistors, ferrite memory (each bit with its own ferrite torus) and stored data and software on punched cards. He was a civil construction engineer.

I've touched that kind of hardware (still functional in 1991) with awe and reverence during my formative years as technician... but they were already on their last breaths that year already, even in my poor (at that time) corner of the world. Minicomputers built with a mix of TTL and MOS ICs were the backbone of my practical training... and at home I was playing on a ZX Spectrum compatible, learning Z80 assembler (just for the tricks it allowed on that machine)...

Still, about 12-13 years to retirement, and still confined to using windblows at work and at home... but at least my (already 10 y.o.) desktop runs only Xubuntu and I keep a couple of old laptops even older on the same distro to keep al those old joints lubricated :)

[Roland6]

> ferrite memory

The GEC4080 still used ferrite core memory boards (32kb and 64kb) in the early 1980s. That probably puts me in the grandfather category, even through I have a few years before my official retirement…

[Gibots. Idgas Gibots.]

ZX80 FTW!

[David 132]

Let me guess, even that short message took you an hour to type because the membrane keyboard wouldn't register your keypresses consistently? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely an addiction

I have to use a Win 11 machine for work but I will not be installing that on my gaming rig. I’ve bought a one litre pc and built it out as a Linux box to get used to running something other than windows, though I’m probably going to have to build out an IDS/IPS box on my network once Win 10 is out of support.

If Mac’s get more gaming support from Steam I might go down that route and pick up a used / refurbished Macbook but I will not be staying on Windows anymore. Was annoyed enough with them forcing Cortana and all the telemetry into Windows 10 especially after they canned their QA/Testing dept and now they want to invade my privacy even more with recall, no thanks.

I’m thinking of picking up a used graphics card for my old gaming rig and building it out with Steam OS or a gaming friendly Linux distribution and see how many of my triple A titles I can get to load and run on there.

[Yankee Doodle Doofus]

Re: Definitely an addiction

Tip: Buy AMD when you get that used graphics card. Nvidia is getting better on linux, but for the least amount of headaches, AMD is still the way to go. As for those AAA game titles, unless they use a kernel level anti-cheat, they should all run just fine under proton in Steam.

[Boothy]

Re: Definitely an addiction

On your last paragraph.

If you want to check compatibility of your Steam library (without money buying a card etc), go check out Proton DB, you can check games individually, but you can also link your Steam account, and it will show compatibility for your entire library. I've got a 20 year old account now (jees!) and my entire library (around 400!) shows as only 1% borked, and 2% run but have major issues, such as regular crashing. The rest run fine on Linux out of the box, or with some minor tweaking (and the tweaking info is included on Proton DB).

Also just a tip, if going Linux, I'd get an AMD GFX card, rather than Nvidia, AMD are far more pro Linux and Open Source in general, and there are AMD drivers built into the Linux eco system (aka Mesa). AMD basically just works out of the box, no 3rd party drivers needed. Nvidia can be a little more of a challenge.

Have fun!

[Richard 12]

Re: Definitely an addiction

Mac won't be getting more gaming support any time soon, if ever.

Developing for macOS is incredibly painful, and it's obvious that they don't care. Apple clearly consider macOS to be a distraction that they only keep running to support iPhone - as that's where the money is.

Apple threw some cash at Unity to try to make the Vision Pro usable, and they sneakily used some of that to improve general Mac support for Unity games - but it's still really bad.

Valve are working really hard on Proton. I'm pretty sure Linux is where gaming is going to end up - and most things already work well.

[gerryg]

Over the 20 years I have been here...

...the warmth towards the Linux ecosystem has increased considerably. I have no idea if/when the year of LOTD will arrive but the hostility has declined.

A lot of the reasons for not using Linux are essentially that Microsoft inadvertently or intentionally makes playing nice a bit difficult.

It's got a lot better (though my shiny new laptop has a WiFi dongle because ..) So while someone rants about why Windows and why not Linux just sit quietly and recall that Steve Balmer was on the money when he described Linux as a cancer.

[The Dark Side Of The Mind (TDSOTM)]

Re: Over the 20 years I have been here...

Closed source drivers lost many hours of my sleep too... I feel your pain.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Over the 20 years I have been here...

Nah. Monkeyboy was a cancer.

[billdehaan]

I have several friends contemplating Windows 11

Several of my friends are looking at the October Windows 10-pocalyse, and the reactions cover pretty much the entire spectrum.

I personally switched to Linux last year. I started about 18 months ago in October of 2023, and reformatted the Windows machine to Mint last May. A few others have also switched. Some run Ubuntu, some run LMDE, but all are quite pleased with their choice.

Others simply accept the inevitable, and stick with Windows because they don't really have any options not to.

The funniest, however, is a friend who set up a Windows 11 rig he's quite happy with. More power to him, but he dismisses the Windows 11 criticisms as silly, because "all you have to do" is change a few settings, so it's no big deal. The taskbar can't be moved like it could in Windows 10? "I never moved it anyway". The telemetry? "That can be disabled easily". He even thoughtfully made a simple "how to" document to show people how they can easily configure Windows 11.

It was 21 pages long.

I had my Mint PC blow out from a power failure, so I bought a replacement. To restore Mint, I installed the OS, copied over the /home/$USER directory from the old hard disk, then ran mintbackup, selected all packages, reloaded them, and my system was restored, complete with desktop settings (panels, wallpaper, icons, applets, etc.) just as it had been before. There were I think three packages (Proton VPN was one of them) that didn't restore from the backup, and I had to manually install them from the Software Store or just use apt get, and I was up an running.

It look less time for me to install Mint on a new PC from scratch than it takes some of my friends to tweak their systems after a weekly Windows Update.

After you get used to your system not fighting you, and just working in the background, you really notice just how much modern Windows works against the user. I have friends that have scripts like "unfxck.bat" that they run after every Windows Update to reset the OS, because every update just "happens" to reset all of the privacy settings in the system to the most permissive, user choice be damned.

It's nice to work on a system that's not a moving target.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: I have several friends contemplating Windows 11

The telemetry? "That can be disabled easily".

So he thinks.

[billdehaan]

Re: I have several friends contemplating Windows 11

There are several parts to it.

First is the definition of "easily". It entails running a script and then following a multipage procedure of clicking on various buttons in dialogs that may be renamed, or moved, and include phrases like "if the dialog is no longer in the Control Panel, look in the Settings".

Second is that this the fact that this moving target procedure has to be run every time Microsoft re-enables telemetry, after the user explicitly disabling it.

And third, as you point out, it only disables the telemetry that Microsoft allows the operator to disable. There's a nice walkthrough here. Even after the "debloating", there's still a lot of stuff that's sent.

[Excused Boots]

OK now here is where all the downvotes pile in. The vast, vast majority of posts on here are referencing replacing home devices with Linux rather than Windows, and that is fine, possibly a few outlier where someone uses some oddball software package which has no Linux equivalent, but email, web browsing, (most) games, can easily, well fairly easily transition to Linux version of choice!

All fine, except you are missing the elephant in the room; which is corporate users. Look; Microsoft don't give a shit, not the tiniest shit about home users; all move to Macs or Linux, fine, they don’t care!

Outlook and its integration with Exchange is the killer for corporate users. Is there (and I freely admit, I don’t know so hopefully someone on here can enlighten me) a direct, Linux compatible, feature complete replacement for Outlook? Because like it or not, the Outlook / Exchange combo is, absolutely is the de facto standard for companies, and possibly Teams (shudder!)

Now before the downvoters wade in on the grounds that I am obviously an MS fanboy, no, I have Macs at home, I’m typing this on a MacBook, at $work, I have replaced a couple of Windows machines with Ubuntu where appropriate - but Outlook and Exchange is the blocker on the corporate desktop.

[Long John Silver]

Downvotes missing?

If you ask nicely, I will give you a downvote. I am adept at their acquisition and already have one for my post of 12 minutes ago. They are a badge of honour.

[werdsmith]

Re: Downvotes missing?

Indeed, if you have received a downvote that means you have scored a bullseye.

Personally I don’t ever use the upvote/downvote because I am older than 12.

[Glenturret Single Malt]

Re: Downvotes missing?

I am glad to see someone who is in the same age range as myself and who has the same attitude to upvotes/downvotes as I do. I have often wondered if I was alone.

[Doctor Syntax]

It's about 2 decades since I used Outlook. AFAICR it was basically an ordinary email client with the usual address book and a calendar. I can't remember whether it also included RSS and Usenet readers or an IRC client. It was a rip-off of the email client* of Netscape Navigator without the Navigator's web browser.

I do recall, however, that it also included a Basic implementation because the development manage at my client back then spent his time writing a Sudoku solver in it - some productivity gain.

What else? Oh, yes the Outlook/Exchange integration. Kudos as usual to Microsoft for persuading the gullible that lock-in to proprietary protocols is a feature not a bug. Another addiction to add to that which is Windows. As the world comes to realise that dependency on US companies that integration could become a real killer application but not in the sense it was intended to be.

Right here, in front of me, I have the full descendant of Navigator (including the built-in calendar). In fact I'm typing this into the browser window. Instead of lock-in I have (and use) open standards integration with any server that uses CalDav and CardDav. Alternatively I could use Thunderbird which is the stand-alone equivalent.

Frankly I don't think there has been much advance in email clients since Navigator other than cosmetics.

And let's not forget nor forgive Microsoft's persuading the world that top-posting is the way to answer mail.

the flow

breaks up

Top-posting

* I can't remember whether the calendar was a component of the original Navigator.

[Adair]

The problem for many (not all) corporate users isn't the Linux ecosystem, it's corporate users' innate conservatism and 'fear of change' within a corporate environment---who has the guts to risk taking the blame for the costs (not just financial) of initiating and seeing through a fundamental change in corporate culture? This is why corporate entities suddenly curl up and die when their environment has changed but they have not evolved and adapted to thrive within that changed environment.

Inertia is a major thing in corporate cultures. Look at what is happening in the car industry; how many of the legacy manufactures will still be standing in ten years time? Some/many of them are 'dead men walking' as they scrabble around wondering what the hell is going on and why they are falling further and further behind the wave they have signally failed to see coming, and adapt to.

[The Dark Side Of The Mind (TDSOTM)]

I will just drop that here: "Outlook" was pronounced as "Out Of Luck" in some communities I have been... it might be still.

[Anonymous Coward]

Outlook

>> Outlook and its integration with Exchange is the killer for corporate users. Is there (and I freely admit, I don’t know so hopefully someone on here can enlighten me) a direct, Linux compatible, feature complete replacement for Outlook? Because like it or not, the Outlook / Exchange combo is, absolutely is the de facto standard for companies, and possibly Teams (shudder!)

There's hardly anything revolutionary in Outlook and Exchange, especially not in this day and age. Outlook has always been a horrific email and calendar client, and (on-prem) Exchange has always been a wobbly mess which was a pain to keep updated.

At this point in time, it's by far the worst way to do email and calendar. And that's even before we start looking at 'New Outlook'.

The reason businesses stick with it is inertia and the fact that many have bought into half-assed specialty applications which rely on Outlook or another MS Office component to work. It's not just that Microsoft software is shit, it's the whole ecosystem around Windows and Office which is a load of garbage. And sadly, in some industries that garbage is the only option.

But for businesses that aren't reliant on some specialty programs only available on Windows it';s mostly inertia. You don't need Outlook (or MS Office) to run a business. Hell, pretty much all of Silicon Valley and the startups it serves uses Google Workspace, not Windows and MS365.

[Anonymous Coward]

(Old) Outlook is currently getting being replaced by "New Outlook".

"New Outlook" is just a web interface to Office 365's version of Outlook.

[Sudosu]

I was going to mention this but you beat me to it.

I was supporting an implementation for a large client of the full 365 suite a few years back...and I did all my work from from my Linux desktop.

To be fair I did some testing on Windows VM's in their environment (remotely from Linux) for confirming\documenting end user experiences on the full clients, if they existed.

Any of the 365 apps, for my daily use, had web versions which all worked fine on my QubesOS laptop...though Teams took a bit of fiddling for outboard devices due to QubesOS strictly managing peripheral access.

IIRC, all of the control panels for everything were all web based.

The great thing with QubesOS was that I could spin up different disposable VM's for each test ID I had and jump between them quickly without having issues.

They had locked down "anonymous" browsing in the environment so you had to use a different web browser for each account I used to run them at the same time. (I had 5 accounts in addition to my daily driver)

I did get a call one day from one of my admin buddies there asking if I was actually in Zurich as I had grabbed a disposable Tor browser instance by accident instead of the ones I usually used. :)

[0laf]

I had written a lengthy diatribe about W11 but true to form, because I'm using Edge on a W11 machine it randomly refreshed Edge and dumped what I'd written.

So in short ignoring the blatent data harvesting and the sub-par AI being foisted on us W11 is fundamentally and basically just not very good.

[submitted and now in the 10min edit window before W11 shits the bed yet again)

Rather than taking an OS that has been refined over decades and continually polishing an establish and well known UI into something slick and fast with continual modernisation and improvement they have taken an another path which seems to be to hire a thousand school leavers with no experience, tell them to 'be disruptive" then throw all their shit at a wall to see what sticks.

So now we have mutiple apps doing the same thing any one of which might get the bullet at any time, icons and context menus which haven't changed for decades now shuffled, change and hidden just for shits and giggles.

As someone commented above MS does not care about anyone outside the enterprise, but even in enterprise we're all getting a bit tired of eating a new shit sandwhich every release.

When you can't even format a USB drive without going through endless guides and youtube videos on making W11 function properly before finally giving up and resorting to a Linux machine to get the job done something is very wrong.

[Long John Silver]

Losing text

Having spent time composing text for submission in a post, and having it disappear, whether by one's own mistake or from the behaviour of stroppy software, is a considerable annoyance. Linux users are not immune to this malignity of fate.

On my Mint system, I deploy Mozilla Firefox. This browser has an add-on called Form History Control (II). If it is available in Windows Firefox, give it a try.

[0laf]

Re: Losing text

I was not on my personal machine. I'm a long standing FF user, right back to Firebird.

[localgeek]

Re: Losing text

Another simple workaround is to first compose it in something like Notepad++. Then copy and paste your text into the browser when you've finished massaging it. If your browser or the server glitches when you submit the form, you can easily recover. I generally follow this approach for any online form that requires more than a sentence or two.

[Long John Silver]

The missing element?

Having read previous comments, I conclude their authors to be IT professionals or otherwise people knowledgeable about technology they daily rely upon. Not surprising given The Register's intended readership.

Many of the comments suggest long-term familiarity with varying incarnations of Windows, and some with experience going back to the heady days of the inception of 'personal computing', and perhaps before. All these have free choice over home computational equipment, and some in their workaday environment too. Some document their transition from Windows.

Accounts of personal salvation are interesting, but miss deeper questions over whether non-experts can be 'saved' too.

Almost all schoolchildren, college students, and working adults, are thoroughly immersed in the Microsoft ethos: at home as well as in their places of instruction or work. Microsoft Windows and office products are ubiquitous, so also software dependent upon Windows. Clever marketing, subsidies and loss-leaders offered to educational establishments, cement dependence in later life by students. Consequently, private enterprise and public services are entrapped.

Tom Lehrer's 'The Old Dope Peddler' song comes to mind. The last two verses being pertinent here.

He gives the kids free samples,

Because he knows full well

That today's young innocent faces

Will be tomorrow's clientele.

Here's a cure for all your troubles,

Here's an end to all distress.

It's the old dope peddler

With his powdered happiness.

[Richard 12]

Re: The missing element?

It's no longer the case, actually.

At primary school, the kids mostly use tablets.

There is some "PC" use, but it's entirely within a web browser. The kids barely see the shell beyond double-clicking an icon on the desktop - same as tapping the icon on a tablet.

Corporate generally assumes Windows, but even they are starting to get worried about changes Microsoft are foisting on people - when Win 11 got rolled out here, there was a ten page guide to the changes that they couldn't roll back by policy. The Linux users were most amused.

But we are all-in on Azure and Teams now, so MS aren't going to starve.

[The Original Steve]

Haven't we moved on from this shit?

As a 40 year old I grew up on a C64, then DOS and Win 3.x, NT3.x all the way up to W11. Been in infrastructure since 15 years old.

I'm not surprised by the thirsty Linux fans rallying in the comments repeating their personal journey to removing themselves from Microsoft oh so many years ago.

Yet the numbers don't lie. Desktop OS usage is pretty static. Windows has lost huge ground when you include tablet and phone use, but for normal corporate desktops it's by far a price any medium or large enterprise is content paying.

The jibes about forcing AI and bloatware don't really apply for businesses. The OS is customised with tools (3rd party or native) that have decades of pedigree. Even at home, I genuinely couldn't tell you what ads I've come across or what forced AI is relevant.

For 20+ years the FOSS brigade have been banging on about poor security by default from Microsoft. Personally I see the narrative in this article as positive, as the worst that can be put against the worlds most popular desktop OS is it has an ad for an app in one or two tiles in the start menu nobody even sees. (Seriously, who looks through the start menu these days, you press start and type in what you want).

The benefits of Windows range from it's extensive compatibility through to comprehensive management tools included and from 3rd parties.

The Linux evangelists should be delighted. Microsoft have significantly improved the reliability and security of Windows over the last decade. We went from rebooting weekly (sometimes daily!) to once a month - maybe, and that's more likely for patches than to resolve an issue. Blue screens are incredibly rare these days. Security, whilst not perfect, is well within the ballpark of Android, Linux, macOS etc.

Even the cost of Windows has dropped significantly. For home users buying OEM copies from their system builder through to the biggest Enterprise Agreement customers and everyone in-between... Windows pricing has nowhere near kept up with inflation. For home users in particular you can get it for free with very little effort.

Even have a Linux kernel and bash accessible natively from the same window as PowerShell / Command Prompt.

Windows, like all OS's, is merely a tool. I'm no more passionate of Linux or Windows as I am my hammer or screwdriver. I genuinely have given up giving a shit about any platform. It's a commodity as IT has matured.

Even Microsoft have realised this, around the Windows 8 era. MS know the money is in services, the client is purely a gateway to access them, hence why M365 and Azure work fine with every main platform / browser, and Linux is used more both on and to power Azure rather than Windows. Why the hell do we care more than the vendor? We shouldn't, and the article is simply an engagement farming piece which given the number of commentards posting (including myself) has worked.

At this point I of course need to mention that I do use Linux, both client and server side, host my own server, love The GIMP and hate Office's default file format to ensure my geek privileges aren't immediately revoked, as all Windows bashing / Linux evangelising posts require by law.

[dmesg]

Re: Haven't we moved on from this shit?

"Windows, like all OS's, is merely a tool. I'm no more passionate of Linux or Windows as I am my hammer or screwdriver."

One see this kind of comment often, but I think it's the wrong way of looking at it. It's more an instrument, as in a musical instrument. And there's a heckuva difference between a beginner's guitar and a Martin. Windows is constantly drifting out of tune, poorly tempered, with bad fret buzz and muddy bass response, and just when you manage to adjust everything to an approximation of workable, it updates itself back to the original annoyances -- or worse.

If you want to stock with the tool analogy, even a hammer isn't just a hammer. Carpenters have favorite hammers where the balance and feel is far less tiring than others they have. And they'll spend good money for good tape/laser measures or chop saws. Because the quality of your tools makes a difference.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Haven't we moved on from this shit?

"As a 40 year old I grew up on a C64, then DOS and Win 3.x, NT3.x"

While you were playing with your toys some of us were using Unix in production systems and watched Windows develop as a Johnny-come-lately mess. We didn't have to make a personal journey from Windows, we just had to wait for Linux to mature.

The main reason I'm using Linux today is because Microsoft encouraged SCO, which used to be my laptop OS, to commit suicide in fighting Linux in the courts instead of cutting its prices whilst competing on quality. At one point SCO was one of the main platforms for small businesses so it's no wonder that Microsoft offered to hold its coat while it got itself into a fight with IBM.

[Random person]

Re: Haven't we moved on from this shit?

You are talking about just moving the vendor lock in from the operating system to the proprietary cloud.

Here are a couple of rhetorical question for you to consider.

You say that you hate the *X Office file format, what format do you use for the files you create in Microsoft 365?

Do you want your local machine to be an appliance or a general purpose computer? A couple of years ago, Corey Doctorow gave a number of talks about the war on general purpose computing.

[Mitoo Bobsworth]

This is your brain

tH1S Iz Y0or3 brr@1n 0n w1nd03z...

[evadnos nibor]

Re: This is your brain

one can only wonder what spEak You're bRanes (RIP) would have made of it

[Sudosu]

Re: This is your brain

Now we know your password.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Linux Mint will win

Coming October I suspect many will jump ship towards Linux Mint since the flogging has become intolerable. Users simply won't take any more.

And as I've said many times before: Linux Mint suffices for the majority of users who merely use their computer to surf the web, write an email, print a document or watch videos. If just those users move to Linux Mint it will shake Redmond to its foundations.

[Richard 12]

Re: Linux Mint will win

Many of those users are already leaving - mostly to Android.

I do wonder whether Microsoft actually have a strategy, because it certainly looks like "annoy the professionals, while losing the amateurs", which is a weird idea.

Especially as they made home users their testers. Once they're mostly gone the corporates will have to worry.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Re: Linux Mint will win

Most professionals are already switching to Linux since they're tech-savvy and most of the tools (including Microsoft's own) are already available for Linux.

Visual Studio Code is often used on Linux and if you're into developing web applications for .NET or web-based back-end systems there's no need to use Windows.

I don't see Android ever becoming a replacement for the desktop. Billions of poor people may have no choice but to use a smartphone, but in the affluent West there will always be a need to have a "real" desktop machine in addition to a smartphone.

[Decay]

Even With Windows Being Bad, Linux Is Still Too Hard for Most

Donning the flameproof jacket before posting...

I've been using Linux on and off for damn near 30 years, and honestly, I like it — I'm well able to put the effort in when needed.

But...

Let's be straight about it: Windows today is bloated, intrusive, inconsistent, and often frustrating. Microsoft has managed to turn what was once a very usable operating system into a clumsy advertising platform, riddled with unwanted AI, hidden telemetry, and a user interface that seems to change just for the sake of it.

And yet — even with all that — most people still won’t move to Linux.

Why? Because for the average person, even now in 2025, Linux still demands too much technical effort, knowledge, and patience to get set up and keep running.

It’s not just a case of installing Linux Mint and heading off into the sunset. In practice, users still run into:

Hardware driver issues, especially with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth devices, printers, webcams, and newer GPUs.

Software compatibility gaps, where key apps (like Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office macros, or specialist CAD software) either don't exist natively or need awkward workarounds like Wine, PlayOnLinux, or Proton.

Too much choice and fragmentation, with hundreds of distros, package managers, update models, and desktop environments — overwhelming even before you start.

Terminal use still needed for troubleshooting, tweaking, or installing certain software cleanly.

Update risks, where rolling release distros (like Arch or Manjaro) can introduce breakages, and even stable distros (like Ubuntu LTS or Mint) can still occasionally throw problems your way.

For experienced users and tech heads, that's fine — even part of the enjoyment.

But for the ordinary user who just wants to send an email, print a few forms, or watch Netflix, it's simply too much hassle.

The mass market isn't sticking with Windows because it's better — they're sticking with it because it's easier.

Most people will put up with telemetry, ads, and bad design choices long before they'll take on a system that needs technical know-how, constant tinkering, and a fair bit of learning.

It’s not about freedom versus slavery — it’s about effort versus convenience. Ease of use wins. It always has, and it always will.

Until Linux offers an experience as smooth and hassle-free as iOS, Android, or ChromeOS — without needing a geek to hand — it’ll remain a system for enthusiasts, tinkerers, and people who enjoy fixing things.

Even a flawed Windows still beats something that expects you to be your own IT department.

And that's the real reason we’re still waiting for "the year of the Linux desktop."

And for the record — I say all this with a lot of respect and affection for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Even With Windows Being Bad, Linux Is Still Too Hard for Most

From experience and observation:

The way to get around any conceived difficulty in installing or starting just-about-any Linux distro:

1. Find a reasonably intelligent 12- to 16-year old, open to suggestions

2. give the aformentioned adolescent access to an empty PC with a request they try out Linux (any Linux)

3. Light blue touchpaper, stand clear.

Within a reasonably short time you will have someone who can help with your Linux problems

[0laf]

Re: Even With Windows Being Bad, Linux Is Still Too Hard for Most

Most people are not techy, they'll use whatever OS their chosen device is supplied with.

And very few are supplied with Linux. MS incentivises the big manufacturers to preinstall their OS and it's been around long enough that any standard laptop or desktop that comes with Linux is going to look weird to those people.

How do you make them switch? I think if there was a big price difference then lots of people would choose the cheaper option but I guess MS incentives might actually make Linux the more expensive option for them to install.

Exposing kids to Linux at school might help but again MS incentivises installation of it's software in schools and tbh Teachers are not the people to make a radical technology choice. MS has lost ground to Alphabet through the supply of Chromebooks but even they are losing favour in some places because GSuite Apps are weak and businesses like kids to be familiar with MS Office.

[Smirnov]

Re: Even With Windows Being Bad, Linux Is Still Too Hard for Most

You might be right, but then really people do get what they deserve, If you can't make the least of an effort then that means you agree with all the shit that Microsoft is doing to its users.

Besides, there's till ChromeOS Flex, which is as easy as it gets and which is probably the most user friendly way to get into Linux.

[0laf]

Re: Even With Windows Being Bad, Linux Is Still Too Hard for Most

I think you overestimate most people even with that. Do they agree to MS stealing their data etc, I really don't think 'people' care, and they won't until it bites them. Then it'll be someone else's fault.

The denial is strong in many these days.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Even With Windows Being Bad, Linux Is Still Too Hard for Most

"Most people will put up with telemetry, ads, and bad design choices long before they'll take on a system that needs technical know-how, constant tinkering, and a fair bit of learning."

As far as I'm concerned it's Windows that needs the technical know-how, constant tinkering and a fair bit of learning so why put up with the telemetry, ads and bad design choices.

I don't use a rolling distro. I don't even use supposedly user-friendly distros such as Ubuntu or derivatives such as Mint - I suspect Ubuntu has been over-tweaked in order to be promoted. came to realise that something as unassuming as Debian, and subsequently Devuan, were far more straightforward and Just Work.

As per another post up-thread there was a time when it was fun to tinker with computers and Linux was (and still is if you want it to be) a tinkerer's platform and Windows was a workhorse. Personally the tinkering urge has been grown out of, the Windows workhorse has aged badly and is well overdue for a visit to the knackers and Linux, at the non-tinkering end of the spectrum, has matured into the workhorse.

[werdsmith]

Re: Even With Windows Being Bad, Linux Is Still Too Hard for Most

As far as I'm concerned it's Windows that needs the technical know-how, constant tinkering and a fair bit of learning

Windows is fairly consistent. Whereas with Linux I get frustrated when I need to install yet another package manager. How often do Windows users need to clone a github repository and build the source?

Then spend an unquantified amount of time figuring out why the build didn't work?

[happyuk]

Re: Even With Windows Being Bad, Linux Is Still Too Hard for Most

Your statement is historically accurate and has some truth, but the situation has evolved significantly over the last decade. Linux can be low-maintenance if you don’t stray far from official packages.

Ironically, Windows is now learning from Linux by offering CLI and open-source style tooling. Alas Dev environments on Windows can also be tricky.

A major and often overlooked shift is that you're no longer at the mercy of the forums, cryptic man pages or other forms of "documentation". Smug, dismissive, and often unhelpful types have fallen by the wayside. Users especially non-experts like me have a powerful equalizer in tools like ChatGPT. I think this also changes the Windows vs Linux dynamic fundamentally. Much of the historic “Linux is too hard” stigma came from having to rely on niche, gatekept, tribal knowledge.

[Adair]

Re: Even With Windows Being Bad, Linux Is Still Too Hard for Most

Also, distros are gradually moving towards agnostic package managers that work across multiple package formats, so the whole package hopping thing—which in my experience isn't actually much of an issue for most users, who get along quite happily with the distro's native repos, plus Flatpak/Appimage if necessary or preferred—is even less of an issue.

[DS999]

They don't want to introduce Windows 12

Until Windows 10 is EOL later this year. That will allow them to place an expiration date on Windows 11 so they can push customers through another forced upgrade cycle when the new decade dawns.

[Altrux]

23 years of penguin

I've used Linux (various flavours) as my daily home driver since as far back as 2002. It was slightly more painful in those days, but still a superior experience to Windows. I've used Linux as a daily driver in some jobs too, though not my previous one, where I suddenly had to re-acquaint myself with the ways of the borg. In a new role starting today, which is entirely focused on Linux / infrastructure / cloud stuff, I'm slightly disappointed to be handed a fully corporatised, ultra locked-down Win11 laptop. It's like being in a digital straitjacket. I'm hoping I can eventually install a real OS on it, as 90% of the corporate stuff is web-based and should work anywhere. We shall see - otherwise I'll probably just be living in WSL, or maybe even a nice VM if I'm lucky...

[Boris the Cockroach]

Another

view:

I've posted too many times the mantra "No one gets fired for buying m$"

The home users.. well m$ gets its £50 with every pc sold to the home users but its in the corporate world where m$ makes its money. with volume licences and cloud computing and servers etc etc etc. along with orafice. and then theres the microsoft certified XXXXX courses so people can get a job in various IT departments.

And then just so they can screw everyone for more money they release windows 11 and change the lot. again.

At work we're stuck with m$ on the laptops because the CAD software is not certified to work on anything else other than win 10, but the robots..... all of those are either on a custom OS or mostly linux now

Here at roach towers though, windows is used for games only now, the linux mint box does everything else, as for the comment about having to fiddle with settings to get everything running ok on linux... we have to do that with windows too..

Just wish we could take the current crop of OS/GUI designers back in time to a land where the OS boots from cold in 5 seconds, and has a perfectly understandable and useful GUI laid out to a set of decent design rules. especially when not hiding stuff at random

[alain williams]

Re: Another

Just wish we could take the current crop of OS/GUI designers back in time to a land where the OS boots from cold in 5 seconds, and has a perfectly understandable and useful GUI laid out to a set of decent design rules. especially when not hiding stuff at random

That is why I run the MATE desktop. Basically Gnome 2 -- before the Gnome developers made Gnome unusable (well, hard to use).

[bazza]

From the article:

"All of this is reprehensible from an engineering viewpoint. Windows used to be terrible, then it got good, now it's getting terrible again because it is exempt from competitive forces."

Well that's certainly not true at all. Whatever competitive forces have or currently exist for Windows, that's been independent of whether or not Windows itself is any good. Macs have been a sensible competitive desktop / laptop option for quite a long time and has carved out a healthy slice of the market. Since then we've had Vista (bad), 7 (good), 8 (bad), 10 (good), 11 (well, I quite like it though I turn as much of the bloat off as possible)...

Under the hood, the Windows kernel has been pretty solid ever since version 7. For all its cosmetic faults, 11's kernel has brought in some solid security improvements. It also works just fine on ARM. Windows has been pretty good at maintaining software compatibility over long periods. Granted, they've had some howlers of patches screw ups, but MS arent' exactly unique in that regard...

Whether or not an OS is good or not depends largely on what one wants from an OS. The best one is always the one you yourself reaches for out of preference. Myself, I use all of Windows, Linux and MacOS interchangeably, and I also develop for a few more OSes beyond these three. They're all different and do things their own way. There's bits of all of them that I dislike, and others bits that I like.

[Doctor Syntax]

"Macs have been a sensible competitive desktop / laptop option for quite a long time and has carved out a healthy slice of the market."

At the expensive end of the market.

[fredesmite2]

Kill it

Years ago our local pool used Windows PC machine to read card readers ID and open the electric latch .. the decade old machine died and they couldn't get a serial adapter gadget to work that connected to the ID scanner .. and they lost the data base the application used.. ..they had to replace the entire infrastructure.

There are hundreds of thousands of gadgets deployed waiting for the same fate.

[Lost in Cyberspace]

For as long as I can remember...

There have always been apps that install PUPs. If they become unbearable or difficult to avoid, I found an alternative app.

There have also been apps that are outright shady, preying on unsuspecting users for money. I became alarmed when many popular AV brands went down the route of hijacking search results, exaggerating problems, pushing expensive renewals and (often) STILL being a vehicle for selling even more junk. Those got uninstalled, too.

But when the OS does it... and I don't just mean uses the privilege of being the OS - but outright using really shady tactics to push users into subscriptions, accounts, web content (no matter how poor quality) - also doing some weird stuff to lock out the cloud/browser/search/app competition - completely sacrificing the user needs and experience... that's jarring.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but even the way that OneDrive, Bitlocker, and the MS account gets set up, feels somewhat forced, underhanded, and not (always) completely upfront with the user. And it's not really clear what's going to the Microsoft cloud. Is there a central place to check?

Pretty much every Microsoft app and service appears to be influenced by the need to drive users to a subscription or Bing content, with no real thought for the needs of the user.

[martinusher]

Its been an OS but they can't seem to stop fiddling with it

The original GUIs were a simple, but ingenious, way of getting "\OS like" behavior onto a system that lacked an OS. The buzzword at the time was "event driven" where you just fire whatever system events -- timers, keypress, mouse moves etc. -- at the top window of a stack of windows with the actual window code being just an enormous case statement. It wasn't pretty but it worked, sort of.

Around 2000 -- both the date and the version -- the 'professional' versions got a proper operating system, likely an infusion of VMS of some sort or another. This is the point where I discovered -- joy! -- Posix compliant kernel calls. I've never been what you'd call a Posix enthusiast but they did the job. But then things changed, wheels got reinvented, and these calls were replaced by the "will they / won't they? (work, that is)" Microsoft versions. Its likely been downhill all the way from there.

Microsoft has always taken the most contorted, verbose and generally difficult to understand route since the days of MS-DOS. I figured it was a marketing trick -- after all, if something like MS-DOS was as easy to understand as CP/M then everyone would be improving on it and the competition might cause too many problems. So the company seemed to develop the art of complexity to a level that's almost an art form in of itself.

As for the rest of us who just want to get some work done, we use it because the boss told us to. There are better alternatives, in fact given their modern stability issues its unlikely that any other system would do worse, its just its got the decisionmakers by the balls because "they never know" and as we all know, "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IMB, er, Microsoft".

[blu3b3rry]

I'm typing this on a year or so old Lenovo LOQ gaming laptop (13th gen i5), running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Everything worked out of the box beautifully during the install, and its nice and stable when gaming through Steam / Proton (even if the Nvidia drivers could be better).

It was bought new running W11, which I found I didn't get on with at all. Even compared to W10 it just seems festooned with distracting notifications and adverts for crap I didn't want. It generally felt cramped, cluttered and stressful to use, rather than staying out of the way and letting me get on with whatever I wanted to do.

A few days after the warranty ran out I tentatively booted a live Ubuntu USB and was very glad to see everything work just fine. It runs like the clappers compared to the W11 install, with 16GB of RAM being more than enough. Even the GNOME shell doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would. I've only tinkered around with Linux for three or four years - initially as a curiosity and I still have a lot to learn. Ubuntu's customisation of GNOME seems pretty friendly however.

I appreciate it's not for everyone, but I write this as someone that until a few years ago was genuinely clueless about computers with knowledge at the time that was last relevant in the early 2000s.

Walking into a high street retailer to purchase a gaming laptop and getting confused about the nonexistence of 3DFX and ATI graphics cards was not my finest moment.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I fear this article is complacent about the risks of AI being shoehorned into Linux distributions.

I suspect that even now intellects cool and unsympathetic are regarding this o/s with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drawing their plans against it - almost certainly involving systemd.

[Mayiladan]

Windows is never an addiction. Especially since customisation is long gone.

The responsiveness suits may be a lazy professional.

The drivers breakdown every update..

I don't know who gets addicted to windows.

Copilot in Edge is sport, that's all.

[JibberX]

Octogenerian Desktop Management - Living la vida Web Browser

My folks are both on Win 10 laptops and are both being cyber terrorized to upgrade to Win 11.

I KNOW that an in place upgrade to Win 11 is gonna be like replacing the laptop with a 10 year older machine.

As a daily Fedora guy I'm considering going that way as it'll be faster to fresh install that than the cycle of pain of either an in place upgrade to Win 11 - why is random stuff not working - to a fresh install loop, plus the joy of finding whatever files they've put wherever.

The only remaining hump is that Fedora isn't super keep on unattended complete remote desktop access... Its either beause its super secure, simply poorly thought out or deliberately obtuse... Y'know... Linux! Yay!

The other thing is the folks basic reality is most of their activity is web browser based, so that is OS agnostic making the shift less painful either way.

[HKmk23]

Still using W10 but with Edgeblock and WAS deactivated along with all windows updates.

Waiting for delivery of a Mac Studio. The couple of windows progs that will only run on windows I will run inside a Mac window (Boot Camp).

Windows 11 is a Windows 8 update. There is probably an opening to short Microsoft shares right now.

[Mike_R]

Mandatory xkcd

https://www.xkcd.com/456/

[kmorwath]

Another pathetic "plese, use Linux, it will be good (some day), we promise"

Once again, people use applications and devices, not OS. And they use whatever sutis their needs. And the religious approach to FOSS of too many Linux develoopers (while the big ones gets a lot of money from the same very big commercial companies they pretend to hate) means many devices and many applications aren't supported, or are supported somehow by lousy code losing functionalites.

My camera software? My high-end photo printer? Goood luck in using it under Linux. My Logitech Creative Console MX? Sorry, not supported. Photoshoop, Lightroom? Sure, you can replace them with Gimp and Darttable, and curse the day you took such decision.

Windows is bad? Sure, and Nadella made it a lot worse. Still, the only real alternative is macOS, with all its issues as well, starting from the hardware where there's very little choice. If what is available fits you needs (and your budget) it's OK - as long as you don't need Windows-only application - otherwise you have to use Windows.

The very problem of Linux is that FOSS is at the very root of enshittification. You get software whichi is not paid by users, so it's not develooped for the end users - but those paying its development. So Linux is essentially a server OS built for the needs of the huge commerical companies needing a cheap OS they don't have to pay licenses for, or develop on their own. And the same companies are utterly disinterested in a deskop OS - a good desktop OS with a lot of native applications that don't send data to their overlords is completely useless to them. As long as everything happens in a browser, in a a browser they fully control, and sends all data on servers they fully control, they can do whatever they like with user data. So they have no reason to pay developers to develop a real, useful desktpè sytem, while the Linux talibans keep on doing their best to keep away commercial software because it's "baaaaaaaaad".

It worked so well that Windows too is following the same road. Making Outlook a full browser app with every bit of data on Microsoft severs is the obvious ending of a path started by giving away software for free in exchange for user data. And Nadella can make Windows worser and worser counting on the lack of real competition.

And as long as Linux desktop is mostly an amateurish attempt without real funding and efforts - and real applications - it can go nowhere. Apple too is very careful to ensure its drivers stack is very different from the *nix one, and proprietary, so Linux can't take advantage of device drivers written for macOS.

Maybe one day Windows will become such a real mess users will go away. But it won't be because Linux became better. Just, the IT world will have returned to its Middle Ages, and a Commodoer 64 will look again something futuristic...

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Another pathetic "plese, use Linux, it will be good (some day), we promise"

"The very problem of Linux is that FOSS is at the very root of enshittification. You get software whichi is not paid by users, so it's not develooped for the end users - but those paying its development."

Arse about face.

Commercial S/W needs to have something new to keep selling. Windows was pretty good about W2K. Replacement and growth of the global PC fleet would have kept sales going but there's more growth if refresh can be forced so there was an unholy alliance between Microsoft & H/W vendors - new "must have" OS needed bigger and better H/W and the bigger and better H/W came with a new licence.

And who can forget the enforced Office upgrade via new file formats.

Then there are all the other up-sell tricks, the EOL that forces new purchases.

None of the commercial development takes place because the developers want to use it - it takes place to have something different to force onto the user base. Once there's a monopoly a vendor can force whatever they want onto the market.

This is why you get enshittification of commercial S/W.

FOSS isn't interested in selling anything. There are no commercial pressures to force anything fresh into the market.

But, hey, I recognise the technique. Attribute your principal's worst failings to the other side.

[ecofeco]

Re: Another pathetic "plese, use Linux, it will be good (some day), we promise"

Your DARVO is weak.

[Alan Bourke]

Cue a million replies

confusing anecdote with data.

[DannyH246]

After being a Windows user since forever, switched to Ubuntu about 3 months ago. Will not be going back. Windows is a mess.

[frankyunderwood123]

Tantamount to click bait

Is what this article is.

And I bit.

The central premise has legs but it’s a sentence, not an article.

Windows is a storefront for Microsoft more than it’s an OS for getting things done.

Well yeah, we’ve known that for almost 2 decades.

[nijam]

> A previous hegemony stood under the standard "Nobody ever got sacked for buying IBM." But that flag has long been captured by Microsoft.

They may not have been sacked, but they were pillaged.

[Anonymous Coward]

If we got away from SaaS apps and back to installed apps you would get more users to Linux especially with flatpack.

[DrGoon]

I haven't used Windows outside corporate America for decades. Even at work, I tend to do more by (BYOD) phone, via the MDM ecosystem. As a Unix guy I found MacOS a better place to grow dependent on commercial software, initially with Aperture, then with Lightroom when Apple ceded the market. Now that Adobe is a subscription AI hub, I'd do well to learn the open source alternatives. It's also quite possible that some of us may not be able or willing to use US software in the near future.

[Ian 35]

i've never used Windows

Not bad, for a 40 year career in computing, a first degree and a recent PhD.

My daily driver OS has been,successively, CP/M, 6th Edition Unix, Multics, SunOS 3, various System V Unices, SunOS 4, Solaris, Linux, Solaris agaim (this time on a laptop, which was regarded as nuts even when I was regularly visiting Sun), MacOS (which I've been using for the last twenty years, since I think Tiger). Never Windows. Turned sixty, looking at retirement, office and house contains nothing by MacOS and Linux.

[BPontius]

Not a habit or addiction

Windows is a tool just like DOS was. I browse the Internet with Windows 11, I also browsed the Internet in DOS back in the early days of the Internet with a program called gopher. Connected to a Unix mainframe on an Apple II and also played games, did word processing...etc on Apple and in DOS, just as I do now in Windows 11. The majority of the bloat that Microsoft is adding to Windows 11 is ignored, uninstalled or disabled by me, as it is of no use to me. I would say that society is addicted to the clock, to time, the speed at which everyone rushes to froe, the inhuman speed at which everything must be accomplished and the impossible accuracy demanded at these speeds. Society needs to take a Valium, slow down and take a breath, sit on the porch or lay on the grass and stare at the clouds, take a nap, read a book, just sit quietly, daydream...etc. RELAX PEOPLE!

[Locomotion69]

Tempting....

Now is the perfect time to decide which future will keep you happiest and most productive, a choice as much psychological and technological, and find a way to have fun as you take your chosen path. It's that or going to eBay for that Commodore 64.

Which is actually a nice thought - if happiness and fun are to prevail, a Commodore 64 perfectly fits.

[Jo Ma Sepoes]

Linux cannot compete with Windows

As much as I would love to move to Linux, the sad reality is that it simply cannot compete with the slickness and user-friendliness of Windows.

In my opinion, Windows has moved backward in user-friendliness, slickness and bload when comparing the progression of versions from 7 to 10 to 11. But unfortunately, Linux simply cannot handle locales properly. This has been a problem pointed out by myself and others over 20 years ago and despite frequently highlighting that on several forums, absolutely nothing has been done about it over the past 2 decades.

That coupled with the Linux inability to handle something that is as everyday as Windows RDP is a complete showstopper for anyone serious about migrating their PCs fulltime from Windows to Linux.

I really, really, really, really want to move to Linux and I have tried several times over the years with a number of different distributions, but no Linux distro can seriously compete with Windows desktop as yet, and so Microsoft still has the edge. (See what I did there?)

Until the Linux fanbois and techies listen to what the users need and want, Linux will remain an also-ran for the desktop which in reality is the key to unlocking mass adoption around the globe.

[ecofeco]

Re: Linux cannot compete with Windows

Masterful concern trolling.

Well done. Mind the rug burns.

[david1024]

Finally

At last someone has defined the solar panel retro-computing environment so many will crave.

Solar cell and solar chargers are quite simple to use and economical these days, in the US--get em before the tariffs hit!

[Persona]

Works for me

I play games, browse the web, file away email, do some financial stuff on excel, occasionally draw some stuff on Visio (2007), rarely write a letter on Word, sometimes check WhatsApp if I can't be bothered to pick up the phone. A little bit of Arduino dev too.

I put a new motherboard/processor/memory in my PC a few months back as it was over 6 years old. Moved Windows 10 to Windows 11 probably about a year ago. Both of those were easy taking perhaps 30 mins of my time each. My files are stored on a NAS which I do a cold copy backup on every 3 months. It always seems to want to install a new software version so I probably spend more time looking after the NAS than the PC.

With PC related maintenance taking me 30 minutes a year and Windows costing me nothing I have no compelling need to move off Windows. To me the O/S is almost an irrelevance. I've had Linux machines in the past, and before that used dozens of different flavors of Unix. They are all the same: just something needed to support the things you want/need to do, not something you should be devoting time to.

[druck]

New for old

Avoid a single PC with virtual machines if you can – it's another layer to distract your most precious asset, your attention, plus it will always feel like a slightly inferior option to dedicated hardware.

You've probably still got that perfectly good machine that Windows 11 won't run on, and it will work better than it ever did when new with Linux on it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows server 2019?

I bought a new hard disk and installed Windows server 2019 (graphical edition) on it and can now multiple-boot with win 10 on Bios startup: it seems to act like an add-free version of windows 10 with updates untl 2029. It is however harder to sort permissions and to find drivers for devices…

[Nubcakes]

Windows has been bad since the 90s

The peak of windows as an OS of sorts was in the mid 1990s with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. Since then windows as a system has generally just gotten worse over time.

Windows 95 may have brought the common user into the 32bit world but holy hell it was an unstable buggy mess. 98 improved stability a bit but it was bloated and slow. ME was pretty much worse and all ways. Windows XP, which many praise as being amazing is still worse in my opinion than Windows 98 and Windows 3.11 for workgroups.

Since the Release of windows 3.11; windows has just gotten worse as a whole over the years with periodic releases like windows 7 or 10 that reverse some of the decline, but going up 10 points after falling 50 isnt an improvement; you're still down 40 points. That is basically how I view the Windows OS as a series since 3.11; Perpetual decline with brief moments of slight recovery.

Windows will continue to get worse over time and there is nothing we can do about it. Either switch to a different OS line or grit your teeth and deal with the decline as best you can.

The moment a software layer of sorts is created that lets you use Windows Drivers and Programs on another OS(Linux, Mac, ect) with 99+% compatibility; Windows will begin to crumble very quickly... Provided the Lawyers dont kill it before it can get out into the wild!~

[jglathe]

Good comment. Doing that (semi deliberately) for a decade or so now. There are still some essential Windows boxes for <things sort of required>, they are clearly in the minority now. And run virtualized on unraid. And you get to learn quite a lot of things.