Re: Paying for Windows 10 after July
If anything was ever going to usher in the Year of the Linux Desktop, having Microsoft basically act like the Mafia demanding protection money to maintain access to one's files would be just that.
And once the use of Linux desktops gets to the magic 15% all sorts of nice things happen:
* hardware vendors need to release specs so that Linux support becomes a no brainer
* software vendors will start to feel the pressure for that Linux port
However: I dread what MS will be able to do once it has all MS Windows machines being updated within a few weeks to their latest release. Consider the following:
* MS quietly release protocol update to SMB (file sharing), all machines are capable of the protocol, but none use it; use older protocols.
* 3 months later: new update, that protocol is now mandatory (excuse is a security flaw in the old protocol); will no longer work with old protocol.
At a stroke any machine using Samba (ie Linux, BSD, ...) cannot do file sharing with MS Windows machines. MS announces that "Linux is broken, come back to Microsoft, it just works"