I miss the days when personal computers were simply tools, akin to pencils and handheld calculators. I remember the days of Macintosh System 7 and Windows 95. No upselling services. No automatic updates. No nagging. You turned your computer on, executed programs, and that was it.
On the Windows side, things started going downhill starting with the Windows XP era, and on the Mac the annoyances began sometime in the mid-2010s.
It seems Microsoft, Apple, and other companies realized that they’re leaving money on the table by not exploiting their platforms. Thus, they’re no longer selling simple tools, but rather they are selling us services.
Yes, there are good Linux distributions that don’t annoy me, and the BSDs never nag me, but the problem with switching to these platforms is that I still need Microsoft Office and other proprietary software tools that are not available outside “Big Tech.” There are other matters that make switching away from Windows and macOS challenging, such as hardware support and laptop battery life.
I too remember the days when every unpatched Windows PC was a member of a botnet. Perhaps less fondly than you.
And thankfully this was before a time when everyone’s computers and phones had access to their bank accounts, credit cards, and before email was the gateway to virtually your entire life.
> I miss the days when personal computers were simply tools, akin to pencils and handheld calculators.
> System 7 and Windows 95
If Windows 95 was the complexity level of a pencil to you, Win 10/11 is merely a color pencil. You should be fine getting rid of the nagging and adapting it to your needs, it hasn't become 10x or 100x more complex, merely incrementally more.
> Microsoft [...] not exploiting their platforms.
That's a phrase I didn't expect. What part of Microsoft do you feel was leaving money on the table, as they were sued by basically the whole globefor their business practices ?
What kills me is there seems to be no option for accounting that is acceptable to CPAs besides being held captive paying whatever QuickBooks cloud demands. It's not like dual entry accounting has changed much in 500 years. There are bank integrations and service contracts (notably Apple Card wasn't willing to pay licensing fees for the quickbooks file format, so you simply couldn't syncronize your accounts with your spending, instead falling back to manual import), but they would not make investors happy by merely offering bank connection services
(God forbid banks be required by law to offer a web connector that allows you to request your own data. A workaround I've tried is to have my bank send me an email alert on every transaction over a penny, so at least I have a record, but never got around to setting up an auto import from my inbox)
I've heard that many times, but the 3 accounting firms I've worked with for my business didn't care what accounting software I used. They were all happy to work with Gnucash so long as I could provide the needed reports, all of which were pre-configured in Gnucash. Two were small firms, but one was part of a major national accounting firm/franchise.
Why would anyone want to buy a new computer now unless the old one is worn out?
There is no price/performance improvement. Nor will there be for the next five years or so. NVidia says to expect 10% price increases each year. DRAM prices have doubled, and Samsung says not to expect price cuts. Micron just exited the retail RAM business.
Microsoft is trying to escape this trap by pivoting to Windows as a subscription service. It will get worse, not better.
Yes. So Microsoft (which manufactures hardware itself and has close ties to other hardware manufacturers) needed to find... other ways to, er, motivate people to buy new hardware anyway. Which brings us back to the blog post we are commenting on.
Not sure Windows as a subscription service is the end goal though. But maybe we should all wish for M$ to do that, maybe that would be what's needed to finally bring about the Year of The Linux Desktop™.
I don't think selling more hardware is the primary motivation. The motivation is ensuring everyone has TPM 2.0 enabled on their device.
This allows Microsoft to protect parts of their software even from the user that owns the hardware it's running on. With TPM enabled you finally give up the last bit of control you had over the software running on your hardware.
Unbreakable DRM for software, such as for your $80 billion game business or your subscription office suite.
As a bonus, it prevents those pesky Windows API compatibility tools like Wine from working if the application is designed to expect signed and trusted Windows.
The mass exodus to Linux gaming is already causing a push back against kernel level anti-cheat.
People who 5 years ago didn't give a hoot about computing outside of running steam games are now actively discussing their favorite Linux distro and giving advice to friends and family about how to make the jump.
> With TPM enabled you finally give up the last bit of control you had over the software running on your hardware.
The overwhelming majority of users never had any kind of control over the software running on their hardware, because they don’t know (and don’t want to know) how the magical thinking machine works. These people will benefit from a secure subsystem that the OS can entrust with private key material. I absolutely see your point, but this will improve the overall security of most people.
Registry keys and autoattend.xml config keys are not clever people finding a way, it's people using stuff Microsoft put there to do just this for now. I.e. Windows 11 has not been strictly enforcing these yet, they are just "officially" requirements so when they eventually decide to enforce in a newer version (be it an 11 update or some other number) they'll then be able to say "well it's really been an official requirement for many years now, and over 99% of Windows 11 installs which has been the only supported OS for a while now are working that way" at that time. If they just went straight from Windows 10 to strictly enforced Windows 11 options it'd've been harder to defend.
Windows 12 will close the loophole: your CPU will require a signed code path from boot down to application level code. No option to disable Secure Boot or install your own keys. But there needs to be an installed base of secure hardware for this to happen, hence the TPM 2.0 requirements for Windows 11.
Maybe instead Microsoft could allow Windows 11 to install and run on machines that are otherwise capable and just flash red screens at you all the time where otherwise ads would show up that constantly nag that "THIS COMPUTER IS FUCKING INSECURE!" or something. It would be equally as annoying but I'm sure running latest Windows 11 but with TPM 1.0 instead of TPM 2.0 will be more secure than running Windows 10 without bug fixes and security patches.
(But my understanding is there were other things like bumping minimum supported instruction sets that happened to mismatch a few CPUs that support the newer instruction sets but were shipped with chipsets using the older TPM)
Hardware key storage is a low level security primitive. Both Android and iOS have mandated it for far longer. It's a low level security primitive that enables a lot of scenarios, not just DRM.
For example - it's not possible to protect SSH keys from malware that achieves root without hardware storage. Only hardware storage can offer the "Unplug It" guarantee - that unplugging a compromised machine ends the compromise.
Open source drivers, and a sense that Linux support will forever be top priority, would be a motivator for me. Most of my tech spend has been with Valve in the past few years. I'd love if there was another company I actually enjoy giving my money to.
But that is squandered by piss-poor programming and stupid visual gimmicks.
I had to return to Windows as a daily work platform after a long time away (on Macs). I already knew that it had devolved into a grotesquely defective, regressive parade of UI blunders and deleted functionality... but its actual performance is TERRIBLE. I'm waiting for simple operations that I wouldn't have expected to wait for 20 years ago, even on bog-standard office desktop machines.
You're not wrong, but I was disappointed recently by how well an eleven-year-old Macbook Air still works. I installed NixOS on it, and it's still pretty usable even on modern websites.
An eleven year old computer is still useful, which is kind of cool, but also kind of bothers me in that apparently we haven't made enough progress in software to justify buying new hardware, apparently.
Well it also means it could be a good time to buy so you won't have to pay even more overprice for the same performance years down the line.
I just bought one a good month ago. My old one was over 10 years old, not worn out, but not upgradeable to Win 11. I had been thinking waiting one more year before the security updates to Win10 are out... But I bought in when the first stories hit of the DDR5 price rises - at that time there had 'only' been a doubling, now the price is a further 3x of what I paid a good month ago. I thought it might be a good time to buy given the machine was so old and component prices were going up, and might for a long time.
But yeah, performance improvements aren't what they used to. Part of the reason is that normal things were already felt so fast on the old one ;-) But I did get a much better gfx cards allowing some games that were unplayable before, and I think the CPU upgrade was needed for that as well, and then you might as well overhaul the machine. I also went from 16 to 64 GB, and the 16 GB had been a bit too little for some things.
My only complain is that nowadays laptops are usually poorly built, so unless one purchases an expensive guarantee, anything beyond the default guarantee is not guaranteed.
And the manufacturers are in a quest to remove as many keys as they can from the keyboard. Like you can hardly find any light laptop today with page up/down keys anymore. Why?.... Haven't these guys heard of keyboard shortcuts?
Worse than that, there's no consistency in Fn+key shortcuts. Recently acquired an HP Ergonomic Keyboard as a replacement for a broken Sculpt, only to find out that it literally cannot send Ctrl+Break -- there's no key for it, no Fn+key shortcut for it and the remapping software doesn't simulate it properly.
Nothing tops Apple's infantile refusal to put a (real) Delete key on their laptops. Instead, they have a Backspace key mislabeled "delete."
When the Eject key became obsolete, Apple had a perfect opportunity to fix this omission with essentially no effort. NOPE. Meanwhile, everybody else managed to have a proper Delete key on their laptops.
A hill that I'll die on is that Apple's terminology is more correct than PC terminology for this.
Backspace makes sense if you see the computer as a fancy typewriter.
Delete makes sense if you consider the actions from first principles.
Consider the various forms of deletion (forward, backward, word, file deletion, etc.) Each of these just has a modifier key in Apple's way of thinking. (None, Fn, Option, Cmd) which makes complete sense when viewed against how consistent it is with the whole set of interface design guidelines for Apple software.
The only reason that this doesn't make sense is that it's incompatible with your world view brought from places with different standards. They will never "fix" this as there's just nothing to fix.
Yes, it's a miracle that after 40 years of typing every day, my fingers still work. But that may be a biased view on my part; there may be lots of programmers out there with arthritis in their fingers, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other occupational diseases.
Oh yeah, they sometimes put page up and down on up and down which infuriates me very much. There are other issues like less USB ports, but overall quality is poor comparing to MacBooks.
I’m actually happy about DRAM prices and hope more people share your mindset. This is the only thing that can force developers to start optimizing memory usage instead of externalizing the costs onto the poorest users.
I sincerely hope it works out this way instead of pricing out open sourced development. A couple open sourced projects changed their licensing to help mitigate the increased cost burden from skyrocketing hardware costs. It'll be a sad and potentially dangerous day if most people are permanently priced out.
Any computer that can't run Windows 11 is almost a decade old. There has been plenty of improvement. Compare a laptop with a high end Intel i7 7920HK to even a lower end part like the Core Ultra 5 226V. Right now prices on pre-builts and laptops aren't totally reflecting the craziness at least.
A decade in computing used to mean revolutionary improvements:
- from the C64 to the Pentium
- from the Playstation 1 to the Xbox360
- from the Nokia 3310 to the iPhone 4.
Each of these in roughly a decade.
But 2015-2025 in terms of desktop PCs? Some decent (but not revolutionary) steps forward with GPUs, and much more affordable+speedy SSDs. But everything else has been pretty small and incremental.
I have a brand-new work laptop which absolutely crawls compared to my nearly-15-year-old Thinkpad T430. Is this slowness the Windows 11 advantage? My personal laptop runs plain ordinary Ubuntu 24.04 perfectly, and everything works.
The antivirus / EDR / monitoring / inventory software that most corporate IT departments installs ages computers ten years. We constantly had problems with such services slamming the disk, holding files open, breaking software, running CPUs at 100%, etc.
Many budget laptops from 2020 don't support Windows 11. HP laptops with AMD A4-9125, HP notebooks with AMD A6-7310 APU, HP Envy x360 models with first-generation AMD Ryzen processors.
My daily desktop is mostly 2012 vintage. This hardware is still in use and works fine.
For what it's worth, that machine is being used while I upgrade my 2001 Computer Of Theseus once more. It's now getting it's third motherboard with CPU - this one salvaged from a 2018 or 2019 gaming machine. It's on its second case, and has seen more hard drive and memory upgrades than I can count - all of them piecemeal. Other than perhaps the motherboard screws and hard drive screws, I'm not sure if anything actually purchased in 2001 still survives in there. Maybe the power cable and pc speaker. And I don't remember ever replacing the rear case fan now that I'm looking at it.
2020 Apple MacBook pro has an i9-9880HK, more than enough, but lacks TPM2.0. The issue is this is just a waste of resources and money for a large number of people and the TPM2.0 requirement is silly.
Sad to look back years ago when the first mobile apps started adopting this "Remind Me Later"-only dark pattern and is now festering everyday drivers like your OS.
Between these and services that suddenly suffer from amnesia and spamming me with marketing notifications and emails after months or years of silence, it’s becoming more tiring to use any service that grows significantly enough where they don’t need to care about what their users actually want.
The worst is when the only 'dismiss'-option is "I will do it later"... even if you have no intention of ever doing it... essentially forcing you to lie. It has been a while since I've seen it though, so that's progress!
> Sad to look back years ago when the first mobile apps started adopting this "Remind Me Later"-only dark pattern and is now festering everyday drivers like your OS.
I can offer a slightly different perspective. I remember Microsoft from the 90s and early 2000s. And while technical details differ, their attitude towards users didn't change that much.
I suspect there are cybersecurity stakes regarding win11 and win10, but I am not entirely sure.
I think that the spectre mitigation are not a problem in win11 because win11 is not supported on CPU that are vulnerable, which might be a reason they encourage people to get win11 and get a new PC, but that's an unverified guess, I am just trying to get them the benefit of the doubt.
SteamOS looks like it might take a lot of the windows cake, but it remains to be seen if they will be able to.
So far it doesn't look like SteamOS supports most of PC hardware out there, but it could be a next step for Valve.
Realistically only four of those are viable for modern workflows (Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD). It would be pretty hard to use Plan 9 or Genode/SculptOS with seL4 as a typical desktop OS. Haiku is almost there, but I think it still has a ways to go before being anywhere close to adequate for my typical desktop use.
I agree with the sentiment though; nowadays Linux has gotten good enough for most stuff, to a point where I don't really see why anyone still runs Windows. If only I could convince my parents of that...
The more likely option than any of these excellent free options is going to be MacOS… just because your average user with even semi-technical inclination does not want to use LibreOffice Present; they want PowerPoint.
I have just seen this first hand with my significant other: they are very technical and more than capable of it, but have zero interest in learning Linux and instead just bought a MacBook on Black Friday specials when their 5 year old HP laptop finally got too annoying to use.
Until recently (<10 years ago) Windows and native Windows apps (like Office) were the norm in most companies. Almost all employees knew how to use Windows. Re-training all was difficult. Now, with mostly web-apps for most non-IT employees it is a realistic change, but I am still not sure corporations will want to run without Active Directory and Crowdstrike.
What a bubble you exist in. I'm self-employed and my entire suite of software is either windows or apple only and I have 'been a pc' for nearly thirty years and have pc hardware that fulfills all my requirements and can't run apple software.
I'm eyeing up a shift to apple when my current hardware fails me, but it's impossible for me to just go Linux.
I think in your situation I'd use a Mac just because they don't show you a bunch of advertising bullshit all the time, but I do understand the overall point: a lot of software simply doesn't exist on Linux.
Wine is getting better and better, but it's still not perfect yet. I am so wishing that they figure out a way to get modern MS Office working, and then I feel like a lot of people's only reasons for staying on Windows would suddenly disappear.
You are a digital serf, dependent on the good will and love of a lord that gives you access in exchange for a tax.
I really wish free(libre) tools existed that allowed you to do your work. Hopefully they will in the future, I am sure someone has tried/is trying to build them.
I think it would be less daunting for many if there were 1 or 2 popular alternatives to rally around. Including window managers / desktop environments. (Granted, it's nice they can all coexist peacefully.)
There are a handful of popular Linux distros. Ubuntu is probably the most beginner-friendly one with the most staying power; it's the easiest place to start if you have no other ideas/requirements.
The thing is, a healthy ecosystem thrives on diversity. Rallying behind one or two tends towards a monoculture.
My boomer mother in law could handle Linux whether it be GNOME or KDE. What she cannot handle is not being able to put in a DVD of Turbo Tax 20xx and double click the install button. Nor can she handle not having the native Outlook client, or Microsoft Word.
Yes there are alternatives, and possibly even good enough web versions of these tools, but most of the world isn’t like you and me.
I literally only use Windows for games. And I guess now RealityScan which is gaming adjacent.
If I had the confidence that I could play a new release on Linux day 1 without trading an enormous amount of performance, I wouldn't need Windows at all.
I get what you're saying, but OS vendors could prevent themselves from running arbitrary code, even from themselves, without the user's authorization if they really wanted to. I'm not sure it is in anyone's best interest since it would affect everything from security updates to automatically installing device drivers (e.g. people would be left with insecure systems or would claim Windows is broken since most would not understand the prompts). It would also be difficult to prevent Microsoft's marketing department from sneaking a trojan horse into things like security update.
The average user is not able to understand the code that is running and the 99th percentile user does not want to spend the time to understand the code.
Make it do the security stuff out-of-the-box, allow the user to change ANYTHING they want, including turning off the security stuff. Linux! It's in everyone's best interest.
I mean.. how is this different from any OS distribution? Apple can push whatever. So can Red Hat or Ubuntu or Gentoo. Unless im literally running Linux From Scratch im at the mercy of maintainers to do whatever they want.
But where does the original compiler come from? Reproducible builds are only as good as the compiler used to compile them. That's the point of Trusting Trust. If you build with a backdoored compiler and I reproduce your build with the same backdoored compiler, that solves nothing. This is why full-source bootstrap is important[0].
I'm not sure what the current state of most distributions is, but I remember update applications providing an option to accept or reject individual packages. Even without that, you could preview the list of pending updates and delay them indefinitely, do manual updates of individual packages, or configure it to ignore particular packages during updates. Historically, I believe that you could block certain updates on Windows as well - or maybe you could just rollback and update. Of course none of this is considered user friendly so things may have changed.
"Ubuntu will apply security updates automatically, without user interaction. This is done via the unattended-upgrades package, which is installed by default."
Right, but it's a minor annoyance, get rid of it with:
sudo apt-get remove --purge unattended-upgrades
(doesn't trigger removal of anything else, and you'll enjoy 420kb of additional disk space).
OTOH the real issue with Ubuntu is snap(d). Snap packages definitely do auto-update. You may want to uninstall the whole snap system - it's (still?) perfectly possible, if a little bit convoluted, due to some infamous snaps like firefox, thunderbird, chromium, or eg. certbot on servers
Or just use Debian or any snap-free fork for the matter.
> Apple can push whatever. So can Red Hat or Ubuntu or Gentoo
In the case of Ubuntu and Debian, and to a lesser extent RedHat, I trust the developers not to do that because they have a history of not "just pushing whatever".
Also in many cases I actually know these developers, and I can go round and ask them / remonstrate with them / put a brick through their window / other response if required about it.
There are a lot more distros than RH, Ubuntu, Gentoo and LFS. And none of them will show you ads except maybe Ubuntu. Plus you can also look at *BSD.
None of them comes close to what Microsoft is doing. To me, your comment looks like you do not understand the Linux eco-system. Plus IIRC, LFS can now come with compiled binaries.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
"ProductVersion"="Windows 10"
"TargetReleaseVersion"=dword:00000001
"TargetReleaseVersionInfo"="22H2"
Sets the underlying Registry keys for the Group Policy "Select the target Feature Update version". It tells the Windows Update service to select updates for a specific feature update instead of offering latest.
The most egregious thing in recent iterations of Win11 is that a fresh installation will basically map all of your home folder to OneDrive. My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, etc. A recent Windows update also told me that I need OneDrive now to back up my files. Yup, apparently you really, really need it.
This threw me so hard when I grabbed a cheap laptop from Costco with win11 pre installed. I was saving files to c:/users/me/desktop and then when I opened Desktop in File Explorer, my shit was gone.
Worse is that the notification for this “error” telling me I couldn’t back up without OneDrive was behind the little dot in the restart/logout menu in the start menu, which (until now) only showed me that updates were required. Now that they’ve infested that notification with ads there’s no reason for me to ever look at it again. Good job, Microsoft.
Use Rufus it'll disable hardware requirements, without hassle. You will need an iso. If you know someone with 11 have them download it. Otherwise download the generic.
It also lets you skip the first time install dialogue by setting defaults and add a local-only account. Rufus is the way to go about installing windows.
Had to scroll way too far down through windows gripes to find this, the real answer. Windows 11 will run just fine on your machine, OP. Just use Rufus and a USB stick to do the upgrade.
Windows 10 can still get updates, for I don't remember how many years.
It's a PITA it's not made more obvious, but there are free options, paid options (30$ a year if I remember well), all straight from Microsoft fully supported. Sailing the seven seas for a LTS if the other way.
Microsoft with the push to require TPM 2.0, that isn't really required, is responsible for huge amounts of new e-waste. Any green initiative they claim is out the door.
I hope you researched Linux driver support for that model first. I share the dissatisfaction with the direction of Windows -- but their driver library is unparalleled. Linux CAN run great on lots of machines, but it has nowhere near the hardware support.
My usb scanner would like to have a word with you. Its last supported driver was for windows 2000 and it still works well on Linux.
Hardware support vary between the 2 operating system and new stuff may be supported earlier on windows but I can't say that windows driver library is unparalleled, quite the opposite actually.
I've not really seen that much of a problem with Linux drivers being available recently while the quality problem of windows drivers being unreviewed code seems like its partly addressed for central monopolies but still in the peripherals if you'll pardon the pun.
Most people with ad blockers don't realize how unusable the web is for those that don't have ad blockers. I think most would agree this is a poor state that industry incentives have landed us in, and with the web being distributed, it's hard to know how to fix.
Similarly those who use Linux probably don't realize how bad Windows has got recently.
Microsoft has managed to replicate this awful ux problem on a system that they entirely control...
> Linux was designed to run on potatoes and has very little bloat over the years.
I think it's more that it was designed in the 80s-90s for hardware at the time, and hasn't added bloat or "requirements" since then. So as computers have gotten more capable Linux takes less of the overall capacity.
Well, I'd say it's almost the reverse of how it is with windows.
In windows, the bloat is built in by default. You don't get to chose how the start menu works, you get the windows default start menu and you better like the ads in it. It takes work to pull that garbage out.
In linux most stuff is opt in.
The other part of linux is most stuff isn't simply there running in the background by default. Firefox eats a decent amount of memory, but it's not doing that when I don't have my browser open.
To be honest Linux desktop has been ready for the past 4-5 years or so. Long gone are the days where Bluetooth suddenly stopped, external monitors crashing and when closing the lid only put the laptop to sleep every fifth time. Heck, even Wayland, wireless printers and usb-c docking stations work these days, even with nvidia. You might even find some games.
It’s become a boring appliance that just works every time. Just they way I want it. I even forgot how to use grub.
Especially having ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini available nowadays. It’s a godsend when troubleshooting any Linux issues, and you can learn so much in the process.
I just upgraded my PC’s motherboard, CPU, memory, and video card and used Claude as a build buddy to help me lay out steps to follow. I also used it after installing CachyOS for the second time, but on this new hardware. It had me double checking to make sure I had all the proper drivers set up by running commands, but everything was already setup correctly by CachyOS. It even helped me figure out that I had a fan wire half plugged in, which was causing a fan not to throttle. I would alternate between Claude Sonnet 4.5 and ChatGPT 5.2. But it’s so much easier and quicker than the old days of sifting through the manuals and forums, if you could get online to a forum that is.
I don't know... Two people around me recently switched to Linux because they could not stand how bad Windows 11 got. I did not encourage either of them (I've got my share of frustrations after running a Linux desktop exclusively for 25 years, and will not consent to be the object of their ire when they inevitably get frustrated - I'd rather help them on neutral ground instead).
I've always dual booted windows with some Linux and used it like 90/10.
I haven't even tried windows 11 even though my PC is compatible.
Went full Linux and I'm not sure what I was missing at this point that I needed from Windows.
Ran Pop OS (cosmic) which is the new Wayland based one but unfortunately it's still buggy and then I switched to a gaming focused Linux called Bazzite which has been perfect.
Tiny learning curve because it's an "immutable" OS but have everything I need running on it plus everything gaming related works out of the box.
I’m really hoping Steam Deck keeps on pushing game makers to support Linux. It’s really gotten a lot better, except for competitive games that need most types of anti-cheat.
If Linux supported all the games I wanted to play, I would ditch Windows on my home PC.
But Firefox on Ubuntu is not very good. It can expand to fill the whole machine and get killed by the OOM killer. Sometimes during long text input it hangs and has to be killed and restarted. 8 GB isn't enough any more.
Actual control over my computer? Apple might have less ads, but they really go out of their way to make you feel uncomfortable doing anything they deem not the happy path. And they're still plenty willing to push subscriptions and their software.
IMO Mac eco is good hardware plus meh software. Some built ins are really in bad shape — but I guess people have different opinions, although I think calling Finder a beta version is an insult to “beta”.
Expanded Security Maintenance for Applications is not enabled.
0 updates can be applied immediately.
108 additional security updates can be applied with ESM Apps.
Learn more about enabling ESM Apps service at https://ubuntu.com/esm
every time I log in. Or
> You do not have a valid subscription for this server. Please visit www.proxmox.com to get a list of available options.
That’s if you run a OS version older than 5 years. You can still update to a newer Ubuntu version for free and get another 5 years if you pick an LTS version.
For many types of users, Windows is no longer viable. I have friends who work at a .NET shop and most of that team now uses Macs. Unthinkable just a few years ago. Meanwhile, I checked ProtonDB and now 90% of my Steam library is Platinum or Native. So I finally switched my gaming PC to Linux. Microsoft's priorities are elsewhere, Windows doesn't have a bright future.
Ultimately, I didn't switch to Linux because I wanted to. I switched to Linux because Microsoft became so actively hostile to me I felt like I didn't have any other choice.
No Microsoft, I'm not buying new hardware just to get the new OS. No, I'm not going to let you nag me every single day until I get pissed off enough to. No, I will not tolerate all the little things in your OS that piss me off everyday. Your software sucks. Your filesystem sucks. Your constant nagging sucks. I don't want your cloud TPM security bullshit and I DEFINITELY don't want Copilot or Recall.
Seriously Microsoft: fuck you.
Giving up being able to play certain games - which require me to install malware into my computer anyway - is a small price to pay to have my sanity and freedom back. I own my computer, not you. Goodbye and good riddance.
I already used MacOS and Linux for work anyway. But don't worry Apple, you're riding that line pretty dangerously too - you're gonna be next on the chopping block if you don't get your act together. Framework Desktop is looking like a mighty capable replacement for my Mac Studio.
I would happily switch to Linux, problem is it doesn't support the audio hardware I have. And although I've tried to figure out how the drivers get it working on Windows, I can't separate the wheat from the chaff in the 500+ USB packet dump Wireshark gives me :-( Otherwise I'd dump Windows and throw NixOS on this thing and stripe my two NVMes.
My old 6600 from 2016 is still running fine, I replaced the SSD (Intel 400GB to X25-E 64GB that will last 20 years minimum), the RAM (Micron to Samsung from aliexpress before the price hike... got 8 sticks of 16GB for $40 a pop for backup) and even the old trusty monitor (Both Eizo 5:4 matte VA; mercury tube to led, with f.lux/redshift the blue light is ok).
But with a 3050 upgrade from the 1050 and later 1030 (best GPU for eternity if you discount VR) I had in it it's good for another decade. If a game comes out that does not run on it I wont play it... simple as that... 150W is enough. So far only PUBG stutters, what a joke of bloat and poor engineering that game has become...
Win 10 improved NOTHING over 7.
Win 11 improves NOTHING over 10.
YMMV but recommendation is still: do not buy new X86 hardware; do not use new OS/languages.
Build something good with what you have right now.
Make it so good it's still in use after 100 years.
Windows 7 doesn't have compressed memory (ZRAM). Doesn't support TRIM for NVMe SSDs. Doesn't have WSL. Doesn't have ISO mounting built in. Doesn't have HDR, variable refresh rate, etc...
I have fedora xfce running beautifully on a 2011 i5 Mac mini. Replacing the hard disk with modern SSD was all it took to get it running at acceptable speeds where interacting with xfce is roughly instantaneous
> Win 10 improved NOTHING over 7. Win 11 improves NOTHING over 10.
You had me up to this point. The problem is that there are actually quite a few improvements under the hood over those upgrade paths, but they are unfortunately hidden under all of the bullshit. I was an early adopter of Windows 11 specifically because of their efficiency core support over Windows 10 when I upgraded my CPU.
You need to look at the cost of improvements, and they overshadow all progress.
I'm going linux with TWM (desktop with design look from the 70s) on ARM because M$ is clearly not thinking about the long perspective.
We need a stable platform to build quality software.
And that's saying alot seen how linux is deprecating libc after very short time and the legacy joystick API is not being compiled into modern kernels anymore.
Stability is way more important than bells and whistles.
I'm happy with Windows 11 after tweaks to fix it. I certainly sympathesize with Windows 10 users who can't upgrade. But it seems to me Windows 10 users aren't getting the message: Microsoft just isn't that into you.
Do you think Windows OS is a profit center, especially after factoring in the cost of security fixes for older less secure releases? I'm guessing not (I don't have the figures) and Microsoft would rather you replace your 10 year old laptop that can't run Windows 11 or run Linux on it. They really don't care which, just as long as you go away and they don't have to support you anymore.
I'm not assosciated with Microsoft, just someone who has been using their products for 40 years. I am someone who can read in between the lines, and this is my take.
How did you tweak and fix it? I suffer with Windows 11 at work and everything is just so slow. Alt+Tab often gets stuck and clicking icons on the taskbar don't register about a fifth of the time.
Take a screenshot with Shift+Win+S? That's gonna take at least 10 seconds for the snipping app to even load, after which what I wanted to screenshot is probably gone.
Open a tab in Explorer? Five seconds, during which individual parts of the UI update.
Delete 50k files from some image analysis? That's gonna crash explorer.exe and take down the whole shell.
I suppose they rewrote the Windows shell in React, and every basic interaction is a major undertaking.
At home I have a 12 year old PC, with Linux and the Gnome DE. It is absurd how much faster it is, everything is snappy and instantaneous.
To me, there is nothing to fix in Windows 11 - they have failed horribly.
From my experience, a computer running that slowly is out of memory and hitting the swap file constantly. The tweaks I did are in settings. I turned off widgets, OneDrive and Ads. Also there have been comprehensive scripts for cleaning Windows 11 shared here on Hacker News if you look for them.
There is no free support, e.g. call center agents for Windows 10 users. As for security vulnerabilities in Windows 10, Microsoft is going to continue fixing them until at least 2032 (probably longer with extended support) anyways, as Windows 10 1809 LTSC end-of-life is 2029 and Windows 10 21H2 IoT LTSC is supported until 2032.
Microsoft isn't that into you either. With Windows 11 you are not a customer, you and your data are the products.
Meh. I'm also a Linux destop user on a second machine. I'll completely switch when Windows 11 becomes a problem for me. Microsoft used to be a OS company, but is now a cloud company that offers Linux on it's cloud services.
> "Do you think Windows OS is a profit center...?"
The consumer editions are not all there is to Windows. Nearly every seat of Windows 11 Enterprise used in corporations is a paid license and there are a lot of corporations. Nearly every instance of Windows Server is a very expensive paid license and is required to run Active Directory, MS Exchange, SQL Server, etc.
I have no experience with Windows Server or Enterprise and don't know anyone who does. Forgive me for omitting "consumer" from my description. Yes, I mean consumer Windows.
The author just wants Microsoft to stop harassing him. He's not asking for handouts. He's not even asking to be allowed to bypass the hardware requirements for Windows 11. He just wants to stop getting nagged by Microsoft to upgrade.
He could buy new hardware and run Windows 11. But this pattern will only continue from Microsoft. The only way out is to run a non-Microsoft OS (assuming he can).
The important point here is that data collection and telemetry is worthless and was never about improving the experience for you as a user. The coders behind the update nag had every opportunity to do a hardware check, but as I say, big data is never used to improve anything for end users.
You're not getting what I'm saying. Hassling him is the point. They want him to use Windows 11 or go away. He's a security update expense because he's too cheap to upgrade his laptop or run Linux on it.
I don't know how many years/months/days/hours the author is going to continue using Windows for, but this seems like a perfect task to be "resolved" by AHK, which is probably in the top 10 things Windows users have access to. Worth trying, at least before switching to another source of operating system.
I can only hope that this degradation of UX will make more people switch or consider switching to other distributions. It's the only thing that will make microsoft listen.
I wonder how hard would it be to just switch back to Windows 7 for these kinds of cases? Obviously the most ideal solution is to use Linux but there's still some edge cases where Windows is needed or is just preferred. If you install Windows 7 in a VM you'll be blown away by having a simple, clean OS that just runs applications and doesn't shove ads or Bing search into the start menu. And obviously it would be vulnerable to software exploits but if the device is mostly kept offline I can't see many issues with that coming up. Something to think about...
There must be a way to disable this thing. Maybe we can disable the service? But anyway I already switched to Linux for my daily usage. It is not smooth as Windows due to driver issues and other weird things, like Firefox crashing frequently when I’m typing in a text box like this one, but still feels better than Windows.
The Windows team and its product manager is determined to trash the product. Good work!
Almost every even half decent CPU made in the last decade does have TPM 2.0, albeit for some strange reason OEMs used to ship with it disabled. You may be able to turn it on in the bios.
This is a massive pet peeve of mine as well. As far as I'm aware there's not a single consumer CPU listed in the Windows 11 compatibility list that doesn't have builtin TPM2.0.
Adding to the enshittified pile of bad decissions that Windows has become, the actual requirements for Windows 11 are just a corporate caprice and not a real "requirement". I did whatever it needed to bypass the checks at install time, and W11 is now working exactly and equally as well as W10 was, on a laptop which only has TPM 1.2 and an old CPU.
Where is the requirement then in modern CPUs and TPM 2.0, Microsoft? Didn't you mean "nice to have" so additional but perfectly optional security features could be enabled?
I disagree. I think his intention was to maximize shareholder value which he has done dramatically by making the user the product being sold. Microsoft stock has soared even at the expense of Microsoft shedding users. Satya has realized the true value of Windows as a revenue platform. It never was a competitive operating system.
From my earlier comment to another Windows post:
Windows 11 has transitioned from a standalone tool into a digital storefront that prioritizes recurring revenue through aggressive prompts for Microsoft 365 and OneDrive subscriptions. By mandating cloud-based Microsoft Accounts, the OS effectively anchors your identity to a marketing ID, allowing the company to track behavior and monetize your data. The interface now functions as an advertising platform, injecting "recommended" apps and sponsored content directly into the Start menu and search results. Ultimately, this shift means users are no longer just customers of a product, but recurring assets whose attention and telemetry are sold to sustain Microsoft’s ecosystem and maximize shareholder value.
I disagree. Satya doesn't give a crap about Windows; he's the cloud guy. Over 40% of Microsoft's revenue is cloud. Another 20% is office (which is also heading towards cloud). Windows revenue is a measly 9% -- even less than gaming.
Windows is what it is because it's really not important to Microsoft to anymore. It's effectively unmoored from the rest of organization and left to fight for some kind of financial relevance in an organization that doesn't care about it anymore.
Wasnt there a Google cross app logging framework and request tracking project 15 years ago?
Did grafana die when I wasn't looking? Does datadog still make money?
What's weird about this article is that it's the same thing being said 20 years ago. Is this a sign of people not learning from the better parts of Java deployment stacks?
I've been running Win11 without a TPM for 6 years. Saying you can't upgrade isn't the same thing as Windows saying you can't upgrade. Knowing your OS seems to be a lost art. I'm not dismissing the valid complaint, but the title is empirically wrong clickbait.
When I, as a developer, was told (essentially forced if I wanted to keep my job) to implement dark patterns, I did it knowing I made the world worse. I was fully aware of it, and my coworkers as well, we discussed it openly, and I imagine everyone implementing such tech are. Of course I and other could claim plausible deniability, ”we didn’t understand consent”.
Blaming the sales people is correct. Technically-minded people likely do know better, they just lack the authority to override the top-down administrative decisions.
In Win 11 Home, and want to add a local account and not change it to a Windows account, and not share my stuff with MS. No Cloud or "Backups", thank you.
The option to enable a local account was through the command line only. The dark patterns and persausion to convince me not to was off putting.
But every time I boot in to have to go through the nag screen is off the wall.
It is truly crazy how much I understand the dedication people have to avoid using a unfamiliar system.
On the Windows side, things started going downhill starting with the Windows XP era, and on the Mac the annoyances began sometime in the mid-2010s.
It seems Microsoft, Apple, and other companies realized that they’re leaving money on the table by not exploiting their platforms. Thus, they’re no longer selling simple tools, but rather they are selling us services.
Yes, there are good Linux distributions that don’t annoy me, and the BSDs never nag me, but the problem with switching to these platforms is that I still need Microsoft Office and other proprietary software tools that are not available outside “Big Tech.” There are other matters that make switching away from Windows and macOS challenging, such as hardware support and laptop battery life.
And thankfully this was before a time when everyone’s computers and phones had access to their bank accounts, credit cards, and before email was the gateway to virtually your entire life.
> System 7 and Windows 95
If Windows 95 was the complexity level of a pencil to you, Win 10/11 is merely a color pencil. You should be fine getting rid of the nagging and adapting it to your needs, it hasn't become 10x or 100x more complex, merely incrementally more.
> Microsoft [...] not exploiting their platforms.
That's a phrase I didn't expect. What part of Microsoft do you feel was leaving money on the table, as they were sued by basically the whole globefor their business practices ?
(God forbid banks be required by law to offer a web connector that allows you to request your own data. A workaround I've tried is to have my bank send me an email alert on every transaction over a penny, so at least I have a record, but never got around to setting up an auto import from my inbox)
Microsoft is trying to escape this trap by pivoting to Windows as a subscription service. It will get worse, not better.
Not sure Windows as a subscription service is the end goal though. But maybe we should all wish for M$ to do that, maybe that would be what's needed to finally bring about the Year of The Linux Desktop™.
This allows Microsoft to protect parts of their software even from the user that owns the hardware it's running on. With TPM enabled you finally give up the last bit of control you had over the software running on your hardware.
As a bonus, it prevents those pesky Windows API compatibility tools like Wine from working if the application is designed to expect signed and trusted Windows.
People who 5 years ago didn't give a hoot about computing outside of running steam games are now actively discussing their favorite Linux distro and giving advice to friends and family about how to make the jump.
intel can't even get SGX to work
The overwhelming majority of users never had any kind of control over the software running on their hardware, because they don’t know (and don’t want to know) how the magical thinking machine works. These people will benefit from a secure subsystem that the OS can entrust with private key material. I absolutely see your point, but this will improve the overall security of most people.
(But my understanding is there were other things like bumping minimum supported instruction sets that happened to mismatch a few CPUs that support the newer instruction sets but were shipped with chipsets using the older TPM)
For example - it's not possible to protect SSH keys from malware that achieves root without hardware storage. Only hardware storage can offer the "Unplug It" guarantee - that unplugging a compromised machine ends the compromise.
Open source drivers, and a sense that Linux support will forever be top priority, would be a motivator for me. Most of my tech spend has been with Valve in the past few years. I'd love if there was another company I actually enjoy giving my money to.
You mean the Microsoft vacuum cleaner ? /s
Both performance and performance-per-watt continue to improve with each new generation of CPUs.
I had to return to Windows as a daily work platform after a long time away (on Macs). I already knew that it had devolved into a grotesquely defective, regressive parade of UI blunders and deleted functionality... but its actual performance is TERRIBLE. I'm waiting for simple operations that I wouldn't have expected to wait for 20 years ago, even on bog-standard office desktop machines.
An eleven year old computer is still useful, which is kind of cool, but also kind of bothers me in that apparently we haven't made enough progress in software to justify buying new hardware, apparently.
Which is exactly why MS is pivoting to begging you to buy a new computer by harassing you with an apparently undismissable "upgrade" dialog.
They have to keep the upgrade treadmill running, and lacking "better performance" as the bait, they have resorted to outright harassment.
When the Eject key became obsolete, Apple had a perfect opportunity to fix this omission with essentially no effort. NOPE. Meanwhile, everybody else managed to have a proper Delete key on their laptops.
Backspace makes sense if you see the computer as a fancy typewriter.
Delete makes sense if you consider the actions from first principles.
Consider the various forms of deletion (forward, backward, word, file deletion, etc.) Each of these just has a modifier key in Apple's way of thinking. (None, Fn, Option, Cmd) which makes complete sense when viewed against how consistent it is with the whole set of interface design guidelines for Apple software.
The only reason that this doesn't make sense is that it's incompatible with your world view brought from places with different standards. They will never "fix" this as there's just nothing to fix.
Also, even when they are the same, on certain laptops you literally hit the key-rollover problem.
- from the C64 to the Pentium
- from the Playstation 1 to the Xbox360
- from the Nokia 3310 to the iPhone 4.
Each of these in roughly a decade.
But 2015-2025 in terms of desktop PCs? Some decent (but not revolutionary) steps forward with GPUs, and much more affordable+speedy SSDs. But everything else has been pretty small and incremental.
I have a brand-new work laptop which absolutely crawls compared to my nearly-15-year-old Thinkpad T430. Is this slowness the Windows 11 advantage? My personal laptop runs plain ordinary Ubuntu 24.04 perfectly, and everything works.
For what it's worth, that machine is being used while I upgrade my 2001 Computer Of Theseus once more. It's now getting it's third motherboard with CPU - this one salvaged from a 2018 or 2019 gaming machine. It's on its second case, and has seen more hard drive and memory upgrades than I can count - all of them piecemeal. Other than perhaps the motherboard screws and hard drive screws, I'm not sure if anything actually purchased in 2001 still survives in there. Maybe the power cable and pc speaker. And I don't remember ever replacing the rear case fan now that I'm looking at it.
Between these and services that suddenly suffer from amnesia and spamming me with marketing notifications and emails after months or years of silence, it’s becoming more tiring to use any service that grows significantly enough where they don’t need to care about what their users actually want.
I can offer a slightly different perspective. I remember Microsoft from the 90s and early 2000s. And while technical details differ, their attitude towards users didn't change that much.
I think that the spectre mitigation are not a problem in win11 because win11 is not supported on CPU that are vulnerable, which might be a reason they encourage people to get win11 and get a new PC, but that's an unverified guess, I am just trying to get them the benefit of the doubt.
SteamOS looks like it might take a lot of the windows cake, but it remains to be seen if they will be able to.
So far it doesn't look like SteamOS supports most of PC hardware out there, but it could be a next step for Valve.
Linux FreeBSD NetBSD OpenBSD DragonflyBSD Haiku Plan9 Redox ReactOS Debian Gnu/Hurd FreeDOS Genode SculptOS
And probably some others I haven't heard of. Using Windows in 2025 AND complaining about it is complaining about a self inflicted wound.
I agree with the sentiment though; nowadays Linux has gotten good enough for most stuff, to a point where I don't really see why anyone still runs Windows. If only I could convince my parents of that...
I have just seen this first hand with my significant other: they are very technical and more than capable of it, but have zero interest in learning Linux and instead just bought a MacBook on Black Friday specials when their 5 year old HP laptop finally got too annoying to use.
Also, MacOs is as difficult to learn as Linux is for someone who never used it. Resistance to change exist in all directions.
I'm eyeing up a shift to apple when my current hardware fails me, but it's impossible for me to just go Linux.
Wine is getting better and better, but it's still not perfect yet. I am so wishing that they figure out a way to get modern MS Office working, and then I feel like a lot of people's only reasons for staying on Windows would suddenly disappear.
I really wish free(libre) tools existed that allowed you to do your work. Hopefully they will in the future, I am sure someone has tried/is trying to build them.
The thing is, a healthy ecosystem thrives on diversity. Rallying behind one or two tends towards a monoculture.
Yes there are alternatives, and possibly even good enough web versions of these tools, but most of the world isn’t like you and me.
If I had the confidence that I could play a new release on Linux day 1 without trading an enormous amount of performance, I wouldn't need Windows at all.
I get what the author is trying to say, but...like... obviously?
https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds
[0]: https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2023/the-full-source-bootstrap-...
Of course every time I run an update, they can install whatever. But that's different from what Windows is doing as I understand it...
https://documentation.ubuntu.com/server/how-to/software/auto...
OTOH the real issue with Ubuntu is snap(d). Snap packages definitely do auto-update. You may want to uninstall the whole snap system - it's (still?) perfectly possible, if a little bit convoluted, due to some infamous snaps like firefox, thunderbird, chromium, or eg. certbot on servers
Or just use Debian or any snap-free fork for the matter.
Edit: fixed
In the case of Ubuntu and Debian, and to a lesser extent RedHat, I trust the developers not to do that because they have a history of not "just pushing whatever".
Also in many cases I actually know these developers, and I can go round and ask them / remonstrate with them / put a brick through their window / other response if required about it.
None of them comes close to what Microsoft is doing. To me, your comment looks like you do not understand the Linux eco-system. Plus IIRC, LFS can now come with compiled binaries.
The other OS distributions let you turn it off.
https://gpsearch.azurewebsites.net/Default.aspx?PolicyID=151...
It's a PITA it's not made more obvious, but there are free options, paid options (30$ a year if I remember well), all straight from Microsoft fully supported. Sailing the seven seas for a LTS if the other way.
My usb scanner would like to have a word with you. Its last supported driver was for windows 2000 and it still works well on Linux.
Hardware support vary between the 2 operating system and new stuff may be supported earlier on windows but I can't say that windows driver library is unparalleled, quite the opposite actually.
Most people with ad blockers don't realize how unusable the web is for those that don't have ad blockers. I think most would agree this is a poor state that industry incentives have landed us in, and with the web being distributed, it's hard to know how to fix.
Similarly those who use Linux probably don't realize how bad Windows has got recently.
Microsoft has managed to replicate this awful ux problem on a system that they entirely control...
Linux was designed to run on potatoes and has very little bloat over the years. The UX isn't terribly worse on fairly old hardware.
This is factually not true.
In windows, the bloat is built in by default. You don't get to chose how the start menu works, you get the windows default start menu and you better like the ads in it. It takes work to pull that garbage out.
In linux most stuff is opt in.
The other part of linux is most stuff isn't simply there running in the background by default. Firefox eats a decent amount of memory, but it's not doing that when I don't have my browser open.
Upgrade, to Linux.
It’s become a boring appliance that just works every time. Just they way I want it. I even forgot how to use grub.
I just upgraded my PC’s motherboard, CPU, memory, and video card and used Claude as a build buddy to help me lay out steps to follow. I also used it after installing CachyOS for the second time, but on this new hardware. It had me double checking to make sure I had all the proper drivers set up by running commands, but everything was already setup correctly by CachyOS. It even helped me figure out that I had a fan wire half plugged in, which was causing a fan not to throttle. I would alternate between Claude Sonnet 4.5 and ChatGPT 5.2. But it’s so much easier and quicker than the old days of sifting through the manuals and forums, if you could get online to a forum that is.
It just depends on application compatibility and to a smaller extent driver support, though that shouldn’t be a problem for an older laptop.
I haven't even tried windows 11 even though my PC is compatible.
Went full Linux and I'm not sure what I was missing at this point that I needed from Windows.
Ran Pop OS (cosmic) which is the new Wayland based one but unfortunately it's still buggy and then I switched to a gaming focused Linux called Bazzite which has been perfect.
Tiny learning curve because it's an "immutable" OS but have everything I need running on it plus everything gaming related works out of the box.
If Linux supported all the games I wanted to play, I would ditch Windows on my home PC.
But Firefox on Ubuntu is not very good. It can expand to fill the whole machine and get killed by the OOM killer. Sometimes during long text input it hangs and has to be killed and restarted. 8 GB isn't enough any more.
Both Mac and Windows are for suckers.
> You do not have a valid subscription for this server. Please visit www.proxmox.com to get a list of available options.
every time I log in.
No Microsoft, I'm not buying new hardware just to get the new OS. No, I'm not going to let you nag me every single day until I get pissed off enough to. No, I will not tolerate all the little things in your OS that piss me off everyday. Your software sucks. Your filesystem sucks. Your constant nagging sucks. I don't want your cloud TPM security bullshit and I DEFINITELY don't want Copilot or Recall.
Seriously Microsoft: fuck you.
Giving up being able to play certain games - which require me to install malware into my computer anyway - is a small price to pay to have my sanity and freedom back. I own my computer, not you. Goodbye and good riddance.
I already used MacOS and Linux for work anyway. But don't worry Apple, you're riding that line pretty dangerously too - you're gonna be next on the chopping block if you don't get your act together. Framework Desktop is looking like a mighty capable replacement for my Mac Studio.
But with a 3050 upgrade from the 1050 and later 1030 (best GPU for eternity if you discount VR) I had in it it's good for another decade. If a game comes out that does not run on it I wont play it... simple as that... 150W is enough. So far only PUBG stutters, what a joke of bloat and poor engineering that game has become...
Win 10 improved NOTHING over 7. Win 11 improves NOTHING over 10.
YMMV but recommendation is still: do not buy new X86 hardware; do not use new OS/languages.
Build something good with what you have right now.
Make it so good it's still in use after 100 years.
Windows 7 doesn't have compressed memory (ZRAM). Doesn't support TRIM for NVMe SSDs. Doesn't have WSL. Doesn't have ISO mounting built in. Doesn't have HDR, variable refresh rate, etc...
RAM maybe wears quicker if compressed?
NVMe will break long before a good old SATA drive.
WSL... lol
ISO you can do with daemon tools for free...
Displays are good enough at 60Hz 5:4 matte.
You had me up to this point. The problem is that there are actually quite a few improvements under the hood over those upgrade paths, but they are unfortunately hidden under all of the bullshit. I was an early adopter of Windows 11 specifically because of their efficiency core support over Windows 10 when I upgraded my CPU.
I'm going linux with TWM (desktop with design look from the 70s) on ARM because M$ is clearly not thinking about the long perspective.
We need a stable platform to build quality software.
And that's saying alot seen how linux is deprecating libc after very short time and the legacy joystick API is not being compiled into modern kernels anymore.
Stability is way more important than bells and whistles.
Do you think Windows OS is a profit center, especially after factoring in the cost of security fixes for older less secure releases? I'm guessing not (I don't have the figures) and Microsoft would rather you replace your 10 year old laptop that can't run Windows 11 or run Linux on it. They really don't care which, just as long as you go away and they don't have to support you anymore.
I'm not assosciated with Microsoft, just someone who has been using their products for 40 years. I am someone who can read in between the lines, and this is my take.
Microsoft isn't that into you either. With Windows 11 you are not a customer, you and your data are the products.
The consumer editions are not all there is to Windows. Nearly every seat of Windows 11 Enterprise used in corporations is a paid license and there are a lot of corporations. Nearly every instance of Windows Server is a very expensive paid license and is required to run Active Directory, MS Exchange, SQL Server, etc.
He could buy new hardware and run Windows 11. But this pattern will only continue from Microsoft. The only way out is to run a non-Microsoft OS (assuming he can).
Bonus is it strips out all the crap and is super fast
Downside is a few specific pieces of software refuse to install (for no good technical reason). Adobe Photoshop for example
There is also win11 LTSC iOT which I believe might actually install on older hardware that normal win11 will not (don't quote me on this)
The Windows team and its product manager is determined to trash the product. Good work!
If Windows had a slogan, this would be it.
> The hardware limitation is specifically TPM 2.0
Almost every even half decent CPU made in the last decade does have TPM 2.0, albeit for some strange reason OEMs used to ship with it disabled. You may be able to turn it on in the bios.
Where is the requirement then in modern CPUs and TPM 2.0, Microsoft? Didn't you mean "nice to have" so additional but perfectly optional security features could be enabled?
From my earlier comment to another Windows post:
Windows 11 has transitioned from a standalone tool into a digital storefront that prioritizes recurring revenue through aggressive prompts for Microsoft 365 and OneDrive subscriptions. By mandating cloud-based Microsoft Accounts, the OS effectively anchors your identity to a marketing ID, allowing the company to track behavior and monetize your data. The interface now functions as an advertising platform, injecting "recommended" apps and sponsored content directly into the Start menu and search results. Ultimately, this shift means users are no longer just customers of a product, but recurring assets whose attention and telemetry are sold to sustain Microsoft’s ecosystem and maximize shareholder value.
Windows is what it is because it's really not important to Microsoft to anymore. It's effectively unmoored from the rest of organization and left to fight for some kind of financial relevance in an organization that doesn't care about it anymore.
Did grafana die when I wasn't looking? Does datadog still make money?
What's weird about this article is that it's the same thing being said 20 years ago. Is this a sign of people not learning from the better parts of Java deployment stacks?
It describes so much
The option to enable a local account was through the command line only. The dark patterns and persausion to convince me not to was off putting.
But every time I boot in to have to go through the nag screen is off the wall.
It is truly crazy how much I understand the dedication people have to avoid using a unfamiliar system.
Seriously though, don't get why anyone would voluntarily use, let alone purchase, any windows distro.
Yep. And you got what you've paid for.
Look at it. This is "pro" now.