Looking at it from a perspective other than “Windows shit, use Linux”, MS’ biggest issue here is that the vast majority have no compelling reason to upgrade. Currently.
To the average punter, W11 offers nothing that W10 doesn’t already have. There’s no new technologies that they care about, no new tentpole software that they’re dying to try. Nothing. It has copilot running rampant through it, but most people don’t know what that is or don’t give a shit.
Give Apple their due, when they announce an OS update, they focus hard on the ways it improves over the current offering. Ways it can interact with your other devices, for example. Or even just a whole new design.
But MS advertise nothing beyond “This is new, come get it!”, then wonder why no one cares.
The biggest problem Microsoft has is that the biggest selling feature of Windows is its ability to be backwards compatible and run on older hardware. The fact that a good number of PCs that aren’t even 10 years old can’t even run it is the issue. Also, MacOS names for each update are unique and interesting. Windows 11 is a very uncreative name which has always been a problem with Microsoft; example: Xbox One…
Great point. Their strategy at this point is holding a gun up to your hard drive and saying “upgrade now or your data gets it.”
I thought it was “we are upgrading now and your data gets it”
We’ve moved all of your data into OneDrive for your convenience, however you have exceeded your free OneDrive storage limit, please submit a payment immediately or the data will be deleted
What?! Are they not emphasizing that the start menu has moved from the left of the screen to the middle of the screen? Really seems like that alone should hook people.
Help! Our unsustainable behavior of screwing over customers in the name of quarterly profits has finally caught up to us! Turns out there are long term consequences of our behavior, and now Linux can truly go toe-to-toe with Windows on a home desktop!
I can’t wait for what comes first. The claudication and predictable extended support or the wave of malware paralyzing half the world over unsecured devices.
I’m upgrading to Debian 13 instead, since 13 is bigger number than 11 so obviously it’s better
My first pc had windows 95 and it was indeed vastly better then todays corporate shite
Remember how much people HATED Win95? They still moved to it to escape DOS, but still. Loads of hate.
Way ahead of you on Mint 22 or something like that
Fedora 41 is like being decades in the future.
Arch’s version number is so large, it cannot be shown.
they did convince me to upgrade to linux mint 22 tho
They’re not trying to get me to upgrade my OS, they’re trying to get me to buy a whole new fucking system for no good reason. Every last one of them can die in a fire.
And that’s before we consider that Windows 11 is actually a downgrade.
I literally can’t. And I’m not buying new hardware just to make the switch.
I sidestepped the win11 artificial requirements, and things are great.
Yeah, because if I did then in another 5 years it would be the same thing with Windows 12. Then 13. And so on. So I’m ditching Microsoft entirely in October and moving onto Mint.
The only reason I got a Win11 computer at work is that the new box came with Win11 preinstalled.
Most work is still done on an aging Win7 box and my Linux laptop.
My elderly parents got the “your computer cannot be upgraded” and my somewhat tech-litterate mom asked me to move them to Linux.
Microsoft should’ve realised at some point that the only thing most people need today is a computer that can run a web browser and connect to a printer.
I swear to Torvalds, if the amount of old ladies using Linux because their Fedi relatives installed it on their laptops is accurate we are in the middle of an major demographic crisis.
the only thing most people need today is a computer that can run a web browser and connect to a printer.
I cannot the life of me get my Linux laptop to use my fucking Canon WiFi printer. It detects the printer, says it’s connected, but it simply will not send a print job to it. Windows, iOS and android all use it just fine…but this fucking Linux machine just won’t, I’ve spent hours fiddling with drivers and nothing works, it’s infuriating!
Eh, my in-laws have the same problem… but on windows
Check if you selected the correct driver
Can u tell ur model of printer maybe I can help I had fight a bit with canon printer too a bit but in the end it started working
I’d have to look at it when I get home, I have no clue off the top of my head.
Yeah that sounds bad :/ All Brother here with no issues. Esp. Linux Mint just autodetects and sets everything up directly.
I’ve been trying to get my MIL’s printer working forever.
It wasn’t canon in my case, but I found with other network printers on Linux that not bothering with “auto finding” and just putting the IP address in manually (give fixed devices fixed IPs on your router to make this kind of thing easier). Most desktop environments have a printer tool that should allow manually adding a printer.
I have to say with the work provided HP PoS I last had, it was equally as difficult to get windows to talk to it, to be fair.
Yeah I’ve tried the route of manually inputting a static IP, it will connect to the printer but it still fails to send jobs to the printer. I’ve resigned to just accepting that it’s incapable of WiFi printing with the HW I have, so I send documents to other devices for printing.
I can get mine to speak to my shitberg printer, but I went and bought bootleg ink cartridges and I have a half-day printer battle on my to do list to reset the ink levels and force the printer to accept non-HP ink into its heart.
I sidestepped to Mint. Sorry, Microsoft, your shit’s untenable and disappointing.
I did the same and using Windows at work is slowly becoming unbearable.
Me too? I just switched a few days ago and I’m shocked how easy things have been.
Aside from some generic brand hardware I’ve got, most stuff just works. Main issue is not being able to use my Xbox controller wirelessly at the moment.
That is what I am planning on doing as well. I am not going to install their ad-, bloat- and surveillance-ware.
I did too on my laptop but on pc I’ll probably just stick with windows 10, I’d rather deal with security vulnerabilities then ai in my OS
Take their ESU extension to get one last year of W10 update. At least it gets you time to see if you can migrate on linux maybe.
Hmhm for sure
If you must use windows, and might want to upgrade to 11, lets say, for certain games, this project Flyoobe will help create a windows 11 install without all that bloat and ai
I would recommend for people not to install W11 just for a tiny handful of games. Most work on Linux. If they want to specifically add things to make it only work on Windows you shouldn’t reward them by following along. Find better games to play.
The longer people play along with their game the longer they try to force people onto Windows. Until they are forced to support Linux you shouldn’t support them.
Yeah, well… When the kids want to play Valorant with their friends, it is hard to tell them that thats too bad, because they dont support Linux.
Thank you the link is much appreciated :D
But admit one of my major grips with windows 11 is it’s extremely ugly looking, and I don’t really think there is any way to remedy that
You can replace the default windows UI with an alternative shell like Open Shell (here’s a list). Not sure how reliable this works.
Mhmhmmmh I might try this thank you :}
Proton’s good, by the way. If gaming is holding you back, at least.
I tried but I should probably figure out how proton works and try that
Proton is integrated with the Steam app in Linux, so usually you just install the game and then run it from Steam and it just works in Linux even though it’s a Windows game, without you having to know anything about Proton.
Similarly you can use something like Lutris or Heroic which does the same for Wine and game stores like GOG (it’s even integrated with the store and downloads the game for you, same as the Steam app does for the Steam store).
For some games you might have to learn enough to tweak settings, though for Steam and Proton that’s often just changing the Proton version you’re using for a game in its game launch settings in Steam, which is hardly complicated.
The need to really understand what’s under the hood is generally only when leaving these standard paths: for example if you’re trying to run a pirated version of a game (which might even be for perfectly legit reasons: for example one of my Steam games won’t run in Linux no matter what I do, but the pirated version works fine, probably because of the DRM in the official version) or some old obscure game CD you have around, as the scripts in Steam, Lutris or Heroic that silently configure Proton/Wine correctly for a game might not at all exist for those unofficial or older installers.
so good that i actually get more fps than i did so on windows
Microsoft has given users fair warning, and said that users can get a year of updates for free but eventually the company will have to face facts and extended support beyond October.
We can’t recall a time where Microsoft has done such a thing but these are extenuating circumstances given that most users just aren’t budging.
WTF is this guy talking about? Far as I can tell this is the Win7 playbook all over again. Looking it up, this was the timeline:
Jan. 13, 2015: Microsoft ended Mainstream Support for Windows 7.
Sept. 6, 2018: Microsoft announced the ESUs for Windows 7. The ESU program is a paid service that provides critical security updates for legacy products for up to three years after Extended Support ends.
August 2019: Microsoft announced a year of free ESUs, but only for select users, including customers with an Enterprise Agreement or Enterprise Agreement Subscription with active Windows 10 Enterprise E5, Microsoft 365 E5, or Microsoft 365 E5 Security subscriptions. This was limited to only Government E5 stock keeping units.
Jan. 14, 2020: Microsoft ended Extended Support for Windows 7.
Jan. 10, 2023: The ESUs reached their end of life on the first Patch Tuesday of 2023.
That’s almost a decade of post-end of support updates. If anything, MS confirmed ESU before trying to shut down home user patches this time, so it looks less like terrified backpedalling. And as the linked article itself admits, the data they’re reporting on shows a significant number of users still on Win7. The article waves it away as just “too many”, but the original report says 8.5%.
Because, as it turns out, the kind of people using Kapersky antivirus software and the number of people who would not upgrade from a 16 year old OS that has lost support half a dozen times over the past half a decade show significant overlap. In the Steam survey right now Win 7 is only 0.07%, for reference.
While we’re at it Win 11 is 60% vs 35% for Win 10. For all the headlines when Steam shows Linux growth you don’t often hear over here that Win 11 went up by 0.5% and Windows overall went up by 0.36%, although it’s worth noting that Windows has been pretty stable between 94 and 96% since the survey started.
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep reality checking it: the Win 10 end of support process has been wildly overhyped, particularly among Linux-friendly circles. It is not meaningfully different to moves out of other “good” versions of Windows and it’s not a catastrophic crisis point for MS, for better and worse. They’ll keep support up for the people who need it for as long as they’re willing to pay and most legacy home users won’t even know their old Win10 is unsupported because it’ll just keep happily chugging along with all the same malware it already has until something breaks and they have to buy a new laptop with a preinstalled Win11 or 12 or whatever.
The most the Win10 death hype is doing to hurt MS is create a flurry of social media posts that can convince tech savvy, Linux-curious users who were previously held back by lack of gaming support to give user friendly distros a try.
Uh, sorry, we don’t allow sane takes here. Get out.
This person with their “logic.” Honestly.
Makes me miss windows 7.
