Re: !Linux can and does offer applications to perform the same task"
being often far less integrated than macOS and Windows...
Far less integrated in some company's scheme to make money at the expense of their users, also. It's not that Linux people necessarily think Linux is so far superior to Windows or MacOS that everyone should be falling over themselves to use it, but that it is good enough and that it frees its users from the whims of someone else's corporate moneymaking scheme. "Windows as a Service" comes immediately to mind here.
There are clearly areas that Linux lags behind Windows, but with Windows 10... that crap isn't worth using for free, let alone paying through the nose for it. If you want a black-box OS with a rapid update schedule so its maker can put in gaming mode and other inane features no one asked for, and to massively destabilize the OS with these biannual huge updates just as they've tripled the pace of the rollout schedule, using consumers (who never use/test enterprise features, since they're consumers) as beta testers because they downsized the actual beta testers for cost savings, and all the while imposing ongoing training costs as they keep changing things in their touch-UI oriented OS that 99% of people use with a traditional mouse/touchpad and keyboard, then by all means, Windows 10 is for you. Well, it's not really for you... it's clearly for Microsoft. Everyone else is on their own.
One would wonder how badly people have to be beaten and abused by MS before they finally overcome their Stockholm syndrome and move on. Yes, surely it will be painful for a while, and especially for the first movers, but it has to be done. MS has clearly communicated its intent to everyone... it is going to keep forcing its sub-mediocre crap down our throats and monetizing us without mercy, and that shall be that. I think that the bewildered Windows users out there are still thinking this has to change, that the dark times will pass, but the purveyor of those dark times has already told us that they won't. MS wants to be a cloud services company, so the two possible outcomes of the Windows 10 pain train are (1) people sit there and allow themselves to be monetized without trying to escape, in an apt demonstration of learned helplessness, or (2) people will eventually move on to some other platform, which means MS can stop with Windows completely and be the cloud provider it wants to be-- and all those former Windows customers are welcome to still be Microsoft customers from someone else's OS, since cloud services are inherently platform-agnostic.
Either one of those outcomes is just fine with Microsoft. Going back to the old way, where monetizing Windows was only about collecting licensing fees, where Microsoft's fortunes appeared to be headed downhill along with PC sales (while the fixed costs of Windows development failed to scale down with the customer demand), I would think it is safe to say, is out of the question. The cloud guy who is killing Windows is presiding over a Microsoft with soaring share prices while writing books about how awesome he is and how he got Microsoft's groove back by abusing the core customers who got MS to where they are today. We're not going back to the old model (with that nasty, mean Microsoft of the Gates and Ballmer eras, which I keep hearing was so much worse than it is now), and the Windows 10 pain has just begun. Best to start planning the exit now rather than later... it's going to have to happen, but how much is the company going to be fleeced by MS in the meantime?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
