Microsoft is making Windows into the Nigerian Prince of operating systems. Classically, Nigerian Prince scams are so obvious that they weed out all the people smart enough to avoid being swindled, leaving the easy pickings to be plucked without much effort.
Windows is the same. By Microsoft removing all bypass measures that make it tolerable, their remaining user base will just end up being people who don't care about security and privacy, people who won't complain about being inundated with ads, AI, and bingware, people who have no idea that a modern operating system should be fast, customizable, and open. That 90% customer base is easy to fleece with 10% effort, so why bother with the 10% base that will require 90% effort?
The thing is linux desktop is pretty damn good for a lot of people for their day to day needs. It's just the office tools and gaming. Cloud tools like google docs can handle the office side and valve can sovle gaming. But there still remains the issue of convincing people.
My mom works as a translator and all she needs is email, something to edit documents in and a browser, thats it. She was able adapt to ubuntu pretty fast even though she's not the kind of person who likes learning new tech.
There must be millions of users just like her. But people are very resistant to change and few have an annoying linux evangelist like myself in the house to push them.
We need to get them young somehow. I'm thinking around highschool.
Libreoffice can handle most office documents these days. Steam can run many games via proton/wine. In fact, for normal “day to day” stuff, I find Ubuntu is a solid replacement. The problems arise the moment some non-mainstream/non-prepackaged install is needed on any distro. The newest drivers, some alternative program, a non-standard networking configuration, etc. The moment any of that is needed the Linux distros immediately fall back to terminal commands which are not end-user friendly. I would guess that 99% of “normal” (but non-standard) things can be done with Mac and Windows via GUI only. Installing another driver, a program, etc. Linux is far from there and only seems to achieve that for the absolute most common operations overall (basics). I like Ubuntu, and I am coming to hate this new Windows approach, but the ecosystem of flexibility and “just use a terminal command” mentality will never really let it go fully mainstream (at least until that is resolved).
I replaced Windows with Fedora (KDE) on my moms computer, and she's never even commented on it. The browser icon looks the same, and it's in roughly the same place.
Is there a way to chain launch a "qemu VM --> windows 10 client --> autodesk product" in a transparent way? If we could do that reliably and with a stripped down win10 image, I think the serious office users could just pretend they are running autodesk or whatever software in linux. The big downside I presume is this will not work with software that need tight interaction with custom hardware (mocap suits etc).
My guess is that they are focused only on to cashcow -> enterprise, office, (and all Copilot BS). Sadly very few of IT people I know of move to Linux or macOS for this specific reason. Just like XP users tolerated the tons of systray, toolbar crap - most are tolerating AI shit. To be fair to even knowledgeable people, most are happy to live their live on Smartphone (+ maybe tablet). Most get a corporate laptop from work.
Or gamers that are already used to Windows. So inertia.
Many gamers are married to Windows exclusive games like Fortnite etc., but gamers are also more rebellious than corporate IT staff and many have actually built their computers from parts, so they are not scared of flashing a USB drive. I'm optimistic that this group is the next one to break away from Windows.
> people who have no idea that a modern operating system should be fast, customizable, and open
What a ridiculous idea. Any serious person knows that a modern operating system must, above all, be profitable, profitable and profitable. Caring about people doesn't make you any money, and since you already make up most of the market, it's not like you need to entice anyone over.
A slightly less provocative and crass version of the above, yet one that still conveys the exact same message, is probably what most of the higher-ups of the software world believe. At least the ones that call the shots seem to.
I get the impression that a lot of the old guard are long gone from the Windows team or have no influence. Raymond Chen is still around but not sure how much he actually works on Windows day to day.
With the way the economy is going (some call it K-shaped) it's more profitable to squeeze as hard as you can and extract as much as possible out of whales versus trying to have mass market appeal. Azure, Office and Copilot will sustain them.
Nvidia is doing something similar where they're just extracting as much as possible out of AI companies and not caring one bit about consumers.
This is true with a lot of companies. If you made people actually use their own product (do they?!) maybe they'd think twice before doing boneheaded things
Then again, I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem
When did any manager get promoted for keeping software stable?
Just look at google and their chat softwares... you either make something new, or someone else does and you're left behind... be it ads in their start menu, spyware "AI", or paid solitaire.
I'm not so sure about that. If Microsoft actually removed all the cruft, then they would need around 5% of the employees currently working on it. They'd all be unemployed.
They basically did that though for basic usage. Not activating windows only stops you from changing the background and removes the watermark for activation.
Windows is now less than 10% of their revenue, last I saw. I think Windows is more valuable to keep people in the Microsoft ecosystem, than as a source of direct revenue.
Honestly Windows 7 was the best OS they ever built. It just went downwards from there, and they abandoned it essentially.
I don't understand what's going on at Microsoft, but they leave huge stacks of money on the table. LTSC versions weren't "popular", they were the least worst option for a lot of industries. And now they kinda completely ignored all customer feedback.
Microsoft managed to make every other release of Windows good.
95 good, NT 4 bad, 98 good, 98 SE bad, 2000 good, Me bad, XP good, Vista bad, 7 good...
The plan with Windows 10 was to light their desktop market share on fire in the hopes they could see iPads in the distance and try to chase them. Windows 11 was codenamed "give your toxic ex a second chance."
It’s not about giving you a clean experience, it’s about setting you up as a constant cash cow hooked into and paying for all their services.
I hate adobes current business model and for that matter fusion360 as well. It’s all internet required bullshit but it’s making them tons of money and there are no viable alternatives.
It could be a nice OS, if Microsoft didn’t go out of their way to make it awful.
I run Active Directory at home, for various reasons. I’ve got Group Policy in a good enough shape now that I’m not terribly troubled by Microsoft’s enshittification but it took substantial effort to get there, and it requires some work to maintain.
I put up with so much Windows crap over the years, and Windows 11 was the final straw. It’s not even the gaming OS anymore as Linux feels snappier and more stable for running games.
After using Linux just about everywhere else, I moved my main desktop/gaming rig to Linux about a year ago. (The last Windows install I have is my retro PC.)
I work in e-waste recycling, and it's my first Windows-free job. A family friend called me for advice on her old decrepit laptop. I told her about my work "laptop": a Surface Pro tablet with Linux. I just sold one to her, partially on the security and privacy advantages of Linux.
I have been running Deb 13 on my primary workstation for a couple months, just as stable as Debian 12 I was running for years on my primary. I am able to do all of my programming work, virtual win/mac for compiling and able to play every Steam game I try with zero problems (BG3, CyberPunk, etc), all from a $500 mini-pc. Even bluetooth has had zero issue (which is usually a problem/pita)
My work laptop used to be Thinkpad P1 before they enfored Dell hardware. The current win11 laptop needs to be replaced for stability issues, and I begrudgingly going to ask for a MacBook.
I think “king” may be overstating it somewhat. While it’s true that there are some big titles with anticheat that won’t work on Linux, there are quite a few major titles that work fine, and in practice I’ve been able to use Linux as a gaming system for awhile now without issue. I primarily play Overwatch, The Finals, ARC Raiders, Rocket League and Age of Empires.
I think the success of the Steam Deck has really helped the situation, and the titles that are broken because of anticheat are not important enough to me to keep a Windows system around.
Linux has working EAC. Any software not working on Linux is a Policy decision by the seller, not lacking features on the buyer.
Oh and rootkit level EAC? Expect that to go away on Windows too when MS finally gets sick of Crowdstrike and that ilk causing self inflicted Denial of Service attacks on whole economic sectors.
The anticheat needs to be server-side to be credible, i.e. the game should be designed to only provide the information that client needs for fair play. I know this isn't easy, but it should be the goal.
This is begging the question. Games on linux lack kernel anticheat because linux isn't very popular. Once linux is popular enough, then they will figure out a way to do anti cheat on it in a way that they consider acceptable. Valve already considers VAC good enough, because they want to support linux. Anti cheat on windows works the way it does because that's what's available on windows, on linux they'll figure out some other way.
Recent attacks on Ubisoft and Rainbow Six Siege have brought some interesting concern about the wisdom of having basically a kernel backdoor to the whole system installed and ready to be accessed in case of a company breach (not that this particular attack could allow that, but future scenarios might very well convert the user base into a botnet)
Not sure how much gamers with a modicum of awareness (already a minority) will care, but the risk is there. We could paraphrase that famous line to say that "The 'S' in 'Kernel anticheat' stands for Security".
Anticheat blocks Linux deliberately. Its whole point is to check if you're running an unmodified copy of Microsoft Windows. Linux is not one, so unless it gets really really good at deception, it won't pass those checks.
It doesn't just check if a cheat process is running, because obviously cheats know not to let themselves be discoverable that way. Heck, there are hardware cheats now that simulate various PCIe devices but with extra sneaky DMA operations. (I bought one because it's a cheap way to have an FPGA in my computer)
It's a political problem, though. They don't pass Linux because few people don't buy their games just because they refuse to run on Linux. If people did do that, they'd have to change the anticheat, no matter the consequences. Probably higher cheating, since there is no true official blessed unmodified Linux system to compare against.
Personally I have been playing it on Arch Linux since release and it has always worked just fine, besides it being a deeply janky game regardless of OS.
This is not good to hear, at my work we have the production technicians activate the occasional Windows 7 PC via the phone. We do it this way as these are specialized embedded PC’s that won’t connect to the internet. Flippant comments to “just use Linux” are not understanding the realities of keeping 20yr old software in the medical, offshore drilling, etc industries.
"Just use Windows" seems to be more problematic than "just use Linux" here. Though there is hope that WINE will reach enough feature parity for many applications, accessing external hardware is the hardest thing to emulate.
Building products on top of Windows seems to limit the lifetime of the product to whatever support Microsoft seem to be willing to provide.
The best time to migrate off Windows was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
The phone activation process has moved to a website instead of a phone number. It doesn’t mean the OS to be activated needs an internet connection. You can still activate offline systems.
It's Neowin so the information posted is half right. The device you are activating doesn't need internet. https://visualsupport.microsoft.com/ has the enter code from pc and get activation code
AFAIK Windows 11 IoT, which is intended for exactly these kinds of environments, can be activated via phone and LAN without internet.
Microsoft isn't abandoning these markets. They've been min-maxing consumer software enshittification for years now and doing an extremely good job, but they still have good options for enterprise.
> Flippant comments to “just use Linux” are not understanding the realities of keeping 20yr old software in the medical, offshore drilling, etc industries.
I make such comments. Tell me: what exactly is problematic about medical, offshore drilling, etc industries which makes it difficult or impossible to switch?
... wanna hire me to work on that? I am convinced that, whatever the cost is, it will be cheaper than using software on a very-outdated very-proprietary operating system for another couple of decades.
To name a few (presumably): drivers, proprietary protocols, vendor warranties/support, licensing/relicensing, paying you to do the work, waiting for the work to be done/tested, paying for workforce re-training, justifying this to management etc.
All these reasons suck, but they’re all reality in one industry or another sadly.
The issues are not technical, they are documentation and certification. Here is the specifications for medical device software [1] [2]. You can either keep using a legacy (windows-based) software package, or find the need to verify/validate the entirety of linux and all drivers and packages (software-of-unknown-providence aka. SOUP). You then have to devise a patching schedule/methodology, as right now you just tell the end user to apply the Windows security patches if they’d like. This is a high-cost that is hard to argue for despite the obvious advantages.
I should have a valid license for windows, my Win 8 Pro license (which I paid full price for, like $150) should have worked for Windows 10 (and then transfered to 11) but it's not working anymore for whatever reason, I probably upgraded without disabling the key somewhere or whatever. So when I use Windows I have that "activation required" nag watermark now. When microsoft finally remotely kills my unactivated windows 10 install (a week from now? 6 months?) I'm just not going back. The only reason I dual boot these days is fusion 360 CAD and there's a steam install on there so it's probably showing up as a windows install even though I haven't played games on there in probably years.
Windows will probably continue on forever simply due to inertia but this "you have to have a web login to use your private computer" b.s. is going to turn off a lot of consumers, and this will be the watershed moment where Proton/Wine finally moves from 5, to 10 or 15% of users
Keep milking the cash cows to pay for the new growth area (AI). Convert maximum % of Windows users into subscription service consumers (e.g. cloud storage, Office 365, future paid AI capabilities.)
Also, they haven't cared about Windows 11 consumer sales for decades. It's not a coincidence that it's easier to crack Windows 11 than it was to crack Windows XP.
Microsoft's cloud/AI services are high-margin and lock users into a subscription, i.e. a consistent revenue stream.
Windows is to be a marketing/cross-selling channel for those businesses first and foremost.
They very likely foresee the demise of PC as a platform altogether and are trying their best to shepherd us into their other products.
I'm not sure anyone at Microsoft has any endgame in mind for Windows. The devs are just working on what they're being told to work on, which aren't the parts conducive to happy consumers, while the execs are working on instinct and telemetry without context, and thus are basically flailing with no actual goal in mind beyond the next quarter. Add in that there's little hope for Windows' market share to increase in any large way, and that there thus isn't much reason to spend loads of money or dev time on improving Windows, and there's no wonder that we've come to this point.
The endgame is to eliminate legacy support options. Dedicated phone lines for activation costs money. The overwhelming majority of people using Windows 11 have access to some form/time of internet.
This is also just for activation which is not required to use Windows 11. I don't understand the extreme reactions to this. This isn't 2001 anymore.
The endgame is obviously to sell you Office 365, and Xbox Game Pass. Every Windows user who isn't giving them ARR equals one skeptical eyebrow from wall street.
Replace personal PCs with thin clients that give you an RDP session to Azure? I'm pretty sure a cloud only / subscription based "agentic" OS is the goal for windows. And, conveniently, hardware prices are through the roof until (hopefully) the AI bubble pops.
This - they already renamed remote desktop to Windows App on my work Mac so the next step is just offering "secure computing environmens" for their corporate customers.
They’re using their legacy OS and Office business to subsidize services (LinkedIn, GitHub, npm, vscode, teams, azure, etc).
Consider what our industry will look like once the surveillance as a service/enshittifcation that’s been implemented for windows is ported to those things.
Try switching away from the services I mentioned, and you’ll see why the strategy makes sense.
The problem isn't just that new installs will require this, but if you are on Windows 11, there are a hundred accidental ways to create a Microsoft account. Sometimes it's disguised as an update, or a sneaky notification. Sometimes it's onedrive, or you are trying to login via Edge. It reminds me of how Google was trying to trick us all into getting a Google+ account.
MS: "One way or another, you are creating an account so help me God."
My problem is that Windows fucks up my user name when I log in to my account when setting up a new machine. I drives me up the wall.
My name is Daniel. My name on my MS account is Daniel. When I log in to a new Windows machine, the fucking thing decides my user name, and therefore my user folder, is "Danie". This is NOT my name, it's a different name that is not mine and it makes my computer grating to use every time.
For some retarded reason, windows does not allow online account users to have a username longer than 5 chars, so it goes and truncates whatever the first name it gets back from the mothership when logging in. A local account does not have this issue.
Hm, when I set up the pre-installed Windows 11 on my mother's new laptop, I was able to set it up without any Microsoft account at all (she never had one and doesn't want one). I remember that it was possible by running some command at one point during the setup process. Is that also gone by now?
As someone who hasn't used Windows in a long time, could you explain the benefit of doing a double install like that? I.e., if you stopped at step #1, it's activated, so what purpose does step 2 serve?
I believe once( this is an urban legend) a manufacturer in a middle income country considered going with Linux to save money and Microsoft flew out a sales rep next day to put a stop to it.
Microsoft likes it when you get a "deal" and buy a pro key for 10$. Whatever, you'll subscribe to half a dozen Microwave services ideally paying them 30$ to 40$ a month forever.
The last thing they want is you to try Linux.
However, I had the joy of watching multiple Linux desktop environments crash when I switched to my Bluetooth headphones.
Cinnamon and Budgie both crashed. No one knows why. I had to switch to Mate and then spend another 20 minutes trying to get it look ok.
No typical user wants to deal with this. They'd assume Linux doesn't work and move on.
Some mornings when I wake my laptop from sleep, my USB webcam doesn't work. No matter how many times I plug and unplug, no dice. Sometimes the wifi just refuses to connect to my network. Only a full reboot fixes things.
Sometimes, while I do things on a browser, I get a BSOD, no warning.
Some mornings, usually when I left important work open and half finished the night before, my computer decides to do an update and all my open windows, tabs, reference documents etc are gone, as if someone came and cleared my workbench mid project and now I need to set up all my shit again from scratch.
My personal laptop is a 10 year old POS thinkpad T-something with Linux Mint. Biggest issue is I forget to properly shut it down, and to plug it in every now and then, and the shot battery runs down. Admittedly, the bluetooth is sometimes a little iffy, but I've spent 0 effort trying to resolve it. I just open the lid, and my computer is ready for me. Boots up in an instant and always in the state I left it in (unless I let the battery run down).
My new, modern, high spec, high ram, high-res laptop is easily an order of magnitude more frustrating to use than my linux shitbox laptop.
I quit my job, and bought the laptop from the company. It's getting a wipe this weekend and some flavour of linux, and the wife is getting it as a belated christmas gift. She's due an upgrade, and I decided she's ready to move to linux now.
Windows tends to be a black box. It works or not. Your options to fix a bad Windows install are usually reinstalling or hoping the next update fixes it..
However, on average Windows has less issues with compatibility, particularly on newer hardware. I had a laptop that had a brand new chip, and I pre ordered it so it arrived before the Linux support did.
I could never get Linux to work correctly. It eventually failed for unrelated reasons.
You have to test Linux on your hardware the day you get it. Some laptops will never work with Linux. You can argue the hardware oems are to blame, but that doesn't fix anything.
I'm actually hoping to get a really cheap used Thinkpad soon and experiment with Nix.
>I believe once( this is an urban legend) a manufacturer in a middle income country considered going with Linux to save money and Microsoft flew out a sales rep next day to put a stop to it.
non urban legend: Munich migrated whole city (15K computers) to Linux saving millions. Microsoft moved their German HQ to Munich to win back the contract, and year later city announced removing linux and going back to windows.
I'm using Fedora with KDE Plasma, and at this point I can assure you that I run into more annoyances with Windows than Fedora
Linux has the reputation of being buggy and hard to fix, so some people don't put any effort in finding the solution, but windows has its fair share of issues too.
The problem is with Linux you have a bunch of different "fixes". I like Cinnamon. I've used desktop Linux for a long time. I have no idea how to fix this aside from switching to Mate.
You have almost unlimited permutations of different distros, kernels, etc. Which combination will work for you ?
No one knows. Will the next kernel update bring relief? I will say when you get a Linux system working, it's the most productive experience you can have. Microsoft isn't constantly begging for more money.
It's not like Windows hasn't had a slew of bullshit like this over the years. Especially around audio and peripherals. It still changes my default headphones every time I log in, doesn't recognise my standard audio interface, it's a crapshoot if my USB devices are all recognised every boot.
I never thought it would happen, but now I use Linux about 95% of the time. These days, I rarely touch Windows. It feels like Microsoft’s higher-ups never found a clear direction for the OS, focusing more on saturating the market than on maintaining quality. :(
I think Windows has improved as a basic OS tremendously in the past decade, with things like WSL, winget, terminal, storage spaces, fancyzones and such.
The components of perhaps the best general purpose OS available right now are there, but they are buried behind a crappy car-salesman tabloid-press upsell circus that is frankly unbearable to some users.
What I don't get is why MS refuses to let you pay to avoid the circus - It's like a streaming service that only has the ad-financed tier!
I get that the people who care are a minority, but charging that minority a high purchase price for a just-the-os version of windows seems like easy money and would let them dodge all the badwill by presenting a choice.
Right now the official option is simply "suffer the circus or leave". It should at least be amended with "or pay".
My feeling is they would never do that because it would implicitly admit that stuff is bad and people don’t want it so much they’re willing to pay a lot to remove it.
I used to work at Microsoft in the Windows team (XP/2003/Longhorn/Vista/7).
The product today doesn’t feel like the product I worked on; I feel no connection to it, and every time I think that there’s nothing they could do to make me dislike it any more, Microsoft has another “hey, hold my beer and watch this” moment.
The problem with the old Microsoft this that it was run by engineers who didn’t understand user experience. The problem now is that it’s run by MBAs who dont care about users, just licenses.
i recently upgraded a computer. windows 10 deactivated itself due to the hardware change. i tried everything i could to reactivate. microsoft support told me my only solution was to buy a new license. microsoft treats its customer with contempt.
If you can deupgrade... Deupgrade, make sure it reactivates, then create a local account tied to a microsoft account and reboot and check activation page until it says activated with your microsoft account.
Then upgrade and reboot until it deactivates, then it should let you fix it with your microsoft account... Once that happens, you can remove the microsoft account from your computer.
At that point, find a reseller site and buy a key for cheap or just don't activate Windows at all. I don't think you lose much "features" when leaving it unactivated. It's not worth your time to deal with Microsoft support over Windows activation keys in 2026.
OEM licenses are for the computer, not the motherboard. The online activation historically hasn't worked if you change motherboard, but the phone line folks would always activate it for you if you explained that it was the same computer with a different motherboard.
i bought a builder license from newegg in 2017. unfortunately i was not diligent about saving the product key. this was actually the third time i had been in this scenario after changing hardware. no idea why it wouldn’t work this time around.
we should all come together and collectively kill the idea of using a windows based operating system unless they get their stuff together and give us an AI free, bloat free, single page with 10000 settings configurable for privacy and security and a promise of updating only once a month with full opt out
You pay a lot of money for a special contract, or you plug it into the internet. Whether from incompetence or malice, Microsoft would strongly prefer you did the latter.
I've been running openSUSE tumbleweed myself for years, and recommend Linux to like-minded power users. OP is preaching to the choir.
How do you all deal with (extended) family? This Christmas I spent time with my parents and the topic of Windows 11 came up again with all of its associated dark patterns.
What do you all do to help them out of this madness? Is Ubuntu/Fedora/etc the best option for seniors? My dad's entire career was in Silicon Valley 1.0 where Excel/Outlook was his bread and butter and feels married to Windows, but ever since leaving the workforce those skills are more of a hindrance than an asset.
Now that he's retired, he still uses Excel to plan vacations for example, but Windows is riddled with this BS and I am powerless to help him navigate this anti-consumer behavior. It's incredible that Microsoft is shooting their most loyal customers in the foot with this BS.
Do you all help your parents remotely? What kind of issues do you run into being your parents IT support?
Senior care and technology is going to be a gold rush over the next couple decades. Society is not prepared for the only generation who grew up on the internet to regress into mental infirmary while still believing technology is an essential need.
For those of you who haven't already had to deal with today's 70 year old MCI sufferers and technology, it is already a complete shitshow, and that generation lived half their adult lives without mobile technology.
Imagine finding 12 renewing subscriptions to malwarebytes and other security suites. Or having to burn credit cards every month because they can no longer tell the difference between ads/scams and actual needs. Microsoft, of course, helpfully shovels those scams straight to them via the operating system now. The corporations of America have figured out that milking our elders is good for a quick buck, and it is in their interests to make sure no safety nets are in place. Once they are required, they'll game whatever that system is too.
It is all the control battles our parents fought with their parents over driving, but now it is about the phone/tablet/computer, but not being able to take the phone away as a practical matter because the (first) world expects everyone to have them.
SSO and recovery keys are a problem for proxy account administrators - especially with the banking and medical sectors which still rely solely on SMS. Sites such as login.gov won't allow multiple accounts to have the same phone number. So if both you and your parents need accounts for social security, you as the caregiver can't use your phone as the second factor for their account.
For added fun, many organizations, including banks and the US Government/various federal pension boards, refuse to recognize a power of attorney letter, either. The entire modern situation leaves caregiver children having to commit technical TOS violation/fraud/perjury just to get accounts reset or to (re)gain access to submit address changes.
> For added fun, many organizations, including banks and the US Government/various federal pension boards, refuse to recognize a power of attorney letter, either.
Ouch! That's got to make things hard!
That's thankfully not a problem where I live. Here the problem is more that the banks might be a little over-eager to take agency away from seniors, since once they get a whiff of their grandson helping them with their banking and what not, they lock their account and claim to have broken their TOS or the law regarding not having other people control their account, and that if you want people to do that, you need that power of attorney.
Honestly, this is a lot better than the alternative of not being vigilant enough, and I'd honestly argue that it's better to let there be as little shame as possible in handing over your banking to your next of kind, so that when it starts getting really bad, it's not too late. But this obviously gets very individual very quickly. One senior will handle their banking just fine until their 105, while the next gets Alzheimer at 55, while the next starts to have to put a lot more effort into doing it right at 75, but they don't have any next of kin they can trust to not slowly empty their savings account once they get the power of attorney.
Thanks for bringing up the point about power-of-attorney, I'll have to dive into that as well.
I dread the day I have to get more involved in their healthcare from afar, precisely because of the technology gap. The money grab from big-pharma is going to unrelenting
> She switches it on, double-clicks the Firefox icon, and it opens up.
> That's it. That's the whole thing. I did originally have it set to just launch Firefox full screen on startup, but she didn't like it like that.
I don’t know why, but I immediately thought of the cake mix that was created that originally included egg powder so you just had to add water but people didn’t feel like they were really baking so they removed it and have you add eggs which made people happy and it became super popular.
Something about not wanting Firefox to just open automatically and wanting to double click it instead gave me the same vibes haha.
i think a senior thats coming from windows would probably be better off trying zorinOS. even something as minor as the taskbar being in the "wrong" place on ubuntu could be enough to turn a lot of people off
As much as Windows is deeply flawed, the user interface challenges with Linux are difficult to overcome. Until there is a version of Linux where you don’t have to open the console, Windows will keep its market.
> Until there is a version of Linux where you don’t have to open the console
This is already the case from the Grandma use case, i.e. nothing more than a web browser and maybe Thunderbird and an office program. The terminal issue doesn't come up until you start getting into people who know just enough to be dangerous (myself included).
The larger issue is that computers with Linux pre-installed are (within a rounding error) not a thing, and thus Grandma can't go out and buy one. Telling her to install it on her current computer makes about as much sense to her as asking her to flob the nerfwhizzle. And even if she could, would she place her bets on a (to her) completely new computer system? Not without help or solid recommendations from trusted sources.
My old man has been running Linux for nearly 20 years now. I PROMISE not only that he has never once opened a console, but would spontaneously combust if you suggested it. (I have used a command line on his computer a few times in those two-ish decades, when doing my very rare tech support, but that's just because that's the fastest way for me to get anything done.)
Maybe Windows back in e.g. Windows 2000 days would have some sort of claim to user interface discoverability and predictability which no Linux distribution would have. That ship has sailed; Windows today is a shitshow.
> How do you all deal with (extended) family? This Christmas I spent time with my parents and the topic of Windows 11 came up again with all of its associated dark patterns.
The mom and dad gen are all on iPads or just phones from what I can tell. Very few people there use PCs for their personal computing (work is another matter, but mostly not relevant to this discussion), and those that do are more power user-y. This group largely don't need help beyond edge cases in my experience.
The grandma and grandpa generation are mostly the same story, but there's a lot more who have more or less just bailed completely outside of the absolute essentials (online banking, literal phone calls). Some are still on PCs out of a desire to not change things too much, but I'd imagine switching them over to an iPad is probably an overall improvement once you can get past the unwillingness to shift over to another system. The fact that Windows 11 is such hot garbage will hopefully aid in convincing people of that.
For those who still want a PC, there's Linux. My grandma is on Mint, but that's just because I'm her personal tech support. If I weren't around, she'd have bought a Windows 11 machine from whatever idiot at the local electronics store. I can't imagine that would have gone very well. She'd have probably bailed completely on computing if it came to that.
Very few people in this group of people need software beyond what basic Linux can provide, so Linux should be able to provide a better environment than Windows, but that are loads of potential edge cases, but they're all very small, but all very annoying if you find yourself in one.
> What kind of issues do you run into being your parents IT support?
Mom and Dad: 'Hey, can you help me with this website?' -> 'It's broken, try again tomorrow.' or 'Try that button there.'.
Grandma: See previous.
'How do I do [thing that hasn't changed since Windows 95]'?
'What do I do here?' -> 'Read the message on the screen and act accordingly.'
'My mouse doesn't work!' -> 'Check the batteries.'
Most of these later issues are because she treats the computer mechanistically, one unchanging step at a time, so if anything doesn't go to plan, she functionally panics. I don't know how to solve this problem, but it seems endemic to me given how common of a trope it is in stories from computer savvy people helping the not-so-savvy.
I can't remember where I heard about it, but it probably comes from the fact that a large-ish portion of the population can't connect concepts to things that don't have tangible forms. Thus, all the invisible processes inside any computer (files, memory, networking) that any computer savvy person will be aware of, don't exist and don't make sense in the mind of the not computer savvy, since it has no tangible form. You can find a similar case with office phone systems. Transferring a call is apparently hard for a number of people, since a call isn't a tangible item, doing anything with it makes zero sense. At best you can get them to place calls on hold, but that's only because their office phone will have buttons with blinking lights that say 'Line 1' and 'Line 2' on them, and they can thus easily connect the light blinking with the call on hold. Suddenly it's tangible, and thus it can make sense.
I've been a windows user my whole life, only interacting with Linux servers remotely via shell. I've become quite familiar with command line Linux, but never used a graphical operating system.
distrosea is good place to start if youre not sure what you want yet. it runs full distros online and you only need a browser to connect to them. its a quick way to get a feel for which desktop would suit you best
Phones with propietary spyware and bloatware and with the root user locked. Desktop OSes with enforced updates overriding your settings and choices, up to the point to reinstall back the same adware.
This is just so bizarre. Like 90% of the people wouldn't even know you COULD activate without an MS account and the remainder will just use Rufus to bypass restrictions. So what is MS actually "fixing"?
Windows activation has been a game of CTF for me since the early 2000s. I've got more than enough resources to pay for a Win11 license many times over. But I refuse to. Part is something approximating "I've already paid the windows tax 30+ times" but it's more than this. The UX regression from the XP era is shocking when you put things side by side.
I happily paid $500 for a perpetual VS2026 license just a few days ago, but I'll continue to use things like massgrave for windows no matter how big my cash pile grows. I know it's the same company, but it's really not about the money. It's about sending some kind of a message regarding software quality.
If you could give me an experience identical to VS on Linux I would move in an instant. But it simply doesn't exist. It's frankly not even close after all these years. VSCode is like the IDE "we have at home". Linux is a great target for many things now (e.g., steam deck), but using it as my daily driver development platform is still a non-starter.
I know it's possible to make anything work on Linux, but that's not a very compelling argument for me anymore. It's got to work well. The experience can't suck ass. Even the steam deck was a herky jerky OOBE with WiFi/networking woes and 5-6 reboots to get it going. That's with Gabe Newell ~in charge using billions of dollars to make it go smoothly. I don't have access to those kinds of resources so I figure why even try. I've already thrown ~5k hours into the Linux hole over my lifetime. I don't think it's an investment that has paid off very well for me. Linus himself has acknowledged that the win32 ABI is the most stable and well designed he's ever seen. Why wouldn't I follow his advice?
As someone who has never really liked Visual Studio compared to alternatives (especially the JetBrains suite), I’m genuinely curious what experience you’re getting that you can’t get elsewhere?
Same as the win32 ABI - stability over time. I've been able to build up two decades worth of muscle memory because the product has been very consistent over my career. Rider has "only" been on the market for 8 years. I've actually tried this and many of the alternatives. It's not that they're invalid tool choices. They just don't stick for me.
Relearning things like hotkeys for step [in/out/over] is a nonstarter. I don't really have patience to customize a complex tool like VS or Rider. I've made a point of getting comfortable with the default settings so that no employer or client can ruffle my feathers with locked down machines, etc. You can put me on a completely vanilla windows+VS dev box in an air gapped environment and I would be as happy as a clam.
It's a bit wild that I can't use Windows 10 on my new hardware because manufacturers didn't bother to make the drivers. With how much peiple hate Win11 it seems like a rushed move.
One was laptop sound driver, the other was wifi motherboard driver.
I wonder how PC gaming is going to look in few years with Nvidia slashing GPU supply, RAM manufacturing going down the ai drain and Windows becomming even less attractive than it used to be.
Maybe next AAA stuff will start to target ARM and natively ARM OSes?
I have a windows laptop (and a mac) for work. The windows laptop gets turned on, connected to my limited guest network, only when work yells at me that it hasn't had its security patches recently and in the extremely rare times I need it to do a full build (I'm trying to get our build process away from windows specific. I got the parts I work on away at least). I used MS DOS v2.0. I knew every setting inside and out and had all the tricks down through windows XP. I grudgingly used it up until 5 years ago when I couldn't take MS destroying the OS and user experience any more. Since I switched I have never looked back. Not once have I thought 'Gee, I wish I had a windows box'. Even for gaming. Especially for 'productivity' apps like word and the like. MS used to be THE OS for developers. You built apps for windows because the best tools to build apps were there and the best experience developing was there. Now I have no idea who they are building an OS for other than corporations. It is painful. It is bloated. It is invasive. It isn't intuitive. It can't be trusted. Every time I see windows I cringe and am thankful there are actual alternatives. Good luck MS. You are only being used by people that have to or don't understand they have another option. Lock-in is their only advantage.
I love how people keep saying it’ll be the year of linux desktop with this news. While Windows, keeps thriving in the desktop market. Because one, most computer users want simplicity. Two, pc manufacturers bundle Windows because of reason one. Three, they want a familiar interface. Four, windows license is also bundled in pre-built PC and laptops. Five, even if someone were to build a PC themselves, because microsoft know people pirate windows so much, they actually allow people to use windows without activating! What feature they lose without license? Personalization. That’s it! And six, ordinary people never watch/read tech related channels/websites to begin with knowing what linux even is! Despite i’m a linux user (in the past, now on servers) myself, i won’t say “it’s the year of linux desktop.” Because people refuse to learn new things. Oh my god. *sigh.
Does your mother know how to install a device driver on Windows? None of the non-technical people I know can't fix anything on their computers.
I've been doing experiments over the last 10 or so years, I've been borrowing my Linux laptops to people, and to my surprise, they had absolutely no problem using it. Especially children, you just start using GNOME as if it's nothing. They are already used to different phones, different kinds of computers, it really makes no difference to them. Your mother is probably checking gmail, watching youtube, and maybe writing google docs, not much else.
> Your mother is probably checking gmail, watching youtube, and maybe writing google docs, not much else.
Condescending.
My mother shouldn't need to mess with udev rules to play music to her Bluetooth Speaker because she uses a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard.
She also doesn't want to hang about waiting for systemd to shutdown X out of Y retries when she turns off the desktop because the bluetooth speaker had gone awol.
She also uses a wacom tablet which requires more configuration. Windows provides Plug & Play, and then works. Linux provides Plug & Play with lumps requiring configuration outside of a USB stick.
Can we stop pretending that linux is perfect and in a state for non-techies to swap over? It's potential but still not suitable for the average user. Watching streaming services natively isn't possible without some sort of a hack.
I do it for a job, I don't want to be further support for her outside of. She's an 70-year old illustrator so Photoshop is a must. Her friends who are in their 50's are the same. Linux even after retraining wouldn't gel with them.
Krita, GIMP, are not alternatives for her. Heck, she even maintains her own website.
My father is a historian. He has archives of history stuff bottled away on applications that are not *nix. Yes Wine is suitable for that but that again another set of obstacles.
My version of that is to just use a (high-end) Chromebook. The OS never gets in the way, can’t remember the last time I had to change a system setting or manually upgrade anything
i do feel the ecosystem isn't broad enough for linux to become consumer facing. E.g., if you buy a random chinese made writing tablet and tried using it on linux, it has less than even chance of working straight out the box.
Similarly with bluetooth, wifi (for laptops), etc.
The problem is that OEM are locked into windows, so you have the chicken/egg problem where OEM won't want to spend effort on linux compatibility without a large customer base, and customer base won't grow unless they know for sure it is always going to work for _any_ piece of hardware they might purchase.
May be steam machine and valve could be the push it needs to establish a large customer base.
Windows 11 is a thin client for the Microsoft cloud. It's not surprising that you have to activate it online, and that you can no longer use it without a Microsoft account. That's the whole point.
People who complain that Windows isn't what they want are missing the point. Windows isn't for you. macOS, Linux, and more obscure choices still exist for general purpose computing. SteamOS or various Steam focused Linux distros exist for gaming. ChromeOS exists as a less offensive and more reliable thin OS.
Trying to force Windows into being something it isn't is a waste of your time.
Always reminds me of the quote "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." by T. J. Watson Sr.
The quote is usually delivered as a punchline of sorts, but we're rapidly approaching a world where there truly will be only five computers. If you define a computer as a system capable of truly general purpose computing, and if you count the computers as systems each capable of operating truly independently of the others. The term "general purpose" needs the further qualification, that a great deal of power and political capital will be needed to have any say in what purpose one of these five computers will be put to, and it will then be forced on the other people who are forced to work with that computer.
Seriously. Hacker News is so adamant on Linux it's almost comical. I mean, I get it... this is a site for developers. But I'm a developer and MacOS is great for writing software, the hardware is better than everything else on the market by far, and I don't have to mess around with my computer just to get certain drivers or whatever to work.
I spent $1000 on a Macbook Air, it instantly works with zero headache, has way more app support than Linux, is super fast, and so on.
If I want to play games, I bought the cheapest gaming laptop from Best Buy for like $500 a few years ago and only use that computer to play games.
Nothing wrong with Windows Server Core, which has zero UI. Managed totally with Powershell, which once you get used to it, is an excellent shell/scripting language.
Upgrading to Windows 11 tomorrow for my new gaming pc. Really looking forward to it. Mostly so I can use the new Phone Link functionality to get my iMessages on my desktop.
Do yourself a favor and stick to Windows 10. ISOs are still available on Microsoft's website and you can use local accounts and activate ESU using any of the scripts available on GitHub.
Microsoft is making Windows into the Nigerian Prince of operating systems. Classically, Nigerian Prince scams are so obvious that they weed out all the people smart enough to avoid being swindled, leaving the easy pickings to be plucked without much effort.
Windows is the same. By Microsoft removing all bypass measures that make it tolerable, their remaining user base will just end up being people who don't care about security and privacy, people who won't complain about being inundated with ads, AI, and bingware, people who have no idea that a modern operating system should be fast, customizable, and open. That 90% customer base is easy to fleece with 10% effort, so why bother with the 10% base that will require 90% effort?
The thing is linux desktop is pretty damn good for a lot of people for their day to day needs. It's just the office tools and gaming. Cloud tools like google docs can handle the office side and valve can sovle gaming. But there still remains the issue of convincing people.
My mom works as a translator and all she needs is email, something to edit documents in and a browser, thats it. She was able adapt to ubuntu pretty fast even though she's not the kind of person who likes learning new tech.
There must be millions of users just like her. But people are very resistant to change and few have an annoying linux evangelist like myself in the house to push them.
We need to get them young somehow. I'm thinking around highschool.
Libreoffice can handle most office documents these days. Steam can run many games via proton/wine. In fact, for normal “day to day” stuff, I find Ubuntu is a solid replacement. The problems arise the moment some non-mainstream/non-prepackaged install is needed on any distro. The newest drivers, some alternative program, a non-standard networking configuration, etc. The moment any of that is needed the Linux distros immediately fall back to terminal commands which are not end-user friendly. I would guess that 99% of “normal” (but non-standard) things can be done with Mac and Windows via GUI only. Installing another driver, a program, etc. Linux is far from there and only seems to achieve that for the absolute most common operations overall (basics). I like Ubuntu, and I am coming to hate this new Windows approach, but the ecosystem of flexibility and “just use a terminal command” mentality will never really let it go fully mainstream (at least until that is resolved).
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I replaced Windows with Fedora (KDE) on my moms computer, and she's never even commented on it. The browser icon looks the same, and it's in roughly the same place.
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Is there a way to chain launch a "qemu VM --> windows 10 client --> autodesk product" in a transparent way? If we could do that reliably and with a stripped down win10 image, I think the serious office users could just pretend they are running autodesk or whatever software in linux. The big downside I presume is this will not work with software that need tight interaction with custom hardware (mocap suits etc).
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> Cloud tools like google docs can handl
This.. but whenever this is mentioned people will start the other point. Google is not for privacy.
I have become a silent spectator.
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My guess is that they are focused only on to cashcow -> enterprise, office, (and all Copilot BS). Sadly very few of IT people I know of move to Linux or macOS for this specific reason. Just like XP users tolerated the tons of systray, toolbar crap - most are tolerating AI shit. To be fair to even knowledgeable people, most are happy to live their live on Smartphone (+ maybe tablet). Most get a corporate laptop from work.
Or gamers that are already used to Windows. So inertia.
Many gamers are married to Windows exclusive games like Fortnite etc., but gamers are also more rebellious than corporate IT staff and many have actually built their computers from parts, so they are not scared of flashing a USB drive. I'm optimistic that this group is the next one to break away from Windows.
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I can't help but feel that 10% "smart" users have failed the rest of the 90% users.
10% is approximate casual Linux user base
> people who have no idea that a modern operating system should be fast, customizable, and open
What a ridiculous idea. Any serious person knows that a modern operating system must, above all, be profitable, profitable and profitable. Caring about people doesn't make you any money, and since you already make up most of the market, it's not like you need to entice anyone over.
A slightly less provocative and crass version of the above, yet one that still conveys the exact same message, is probably what most of the higher-ups of the software world believe. At least the ones that call the shots seem to.
Microsoft could have made Windows:
able to run on any hardware
free for basic usage, paid for commercial usage
lightweight, simple, stripped of all cruft and extras
consistent in it's UI and cleaned up from 40 years of inconsistencies
But they didn't - so people are looking for alternatives.
As much as I like many Windows versions, the corporate idiocy of the company behind the OS is indeed something else.
Never ascribe to stupidity, that which has been proven to be malice.
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I get the impression that a lot of the old guard are long gone from the Windows team or have no influence. Raymond Chen is still around but not sure how much he actually works on Windows day to day.
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With the way the economy is going (some call it K-shaped) it's more profitable to squeeze as hard as you can and extract as much as possible out of whales versus trying to have mass market appeal. Azure, Office and Copilot will sustain them.
Nvidia is doing something similar where they're just extracting as much as possible out of AI companies and not caring one bit about consumers.
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This is true with a lot of companies. If you made people actually use their own product (do they?!) maybe they'd think twice before doing boneheaded things
Then again, I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem
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When did any manager get promoted for keeping software stable?
Just look at google and their chat softwares... you either make something new, or someone else does and you're left behind... be it ads in their start menu, spyware "AI", or paid solitaire.
When did any manager get promoted for keeping software stable?
A few industries reward that. Telcos and other parts of critical infrastructure come to mind.
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The employees inside really wanted to build this. The company decided not to.
I'm not so sure about that. If Microsoft actually removed all the cruft, then they would need around 5% of the employees currently working on it. They'd all be unemployed.
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They basically did that though for basic usage. Not activating windows only stops you from changing the background and removes the watermark for activation.
It’s also illegal in most countries
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>free for basic usage, paid for commercial usage
And lose all the OEM license money?
Windows is now less than 10% of their revenue, last I saw. I think Windows is more valuable to keep people in the Microsoft ecosystem, than as a source of direct revenue.
Do they make more money from OEM licenses, or from bombarding Windows users with OneDrive and Copilot 365 advertisements?
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Perhaps Microsoft plans to bundle Windows into its "Microsoft 365" subscription for the consumer market.
won't someone think of the shareholders?
That's an OS for the users.
Windows is an OS for the people who use the users.
Microsoft's slogan in the 90s was "where do you want to go today?"
Now, it should be "where do we want you to go today?"
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Honestly Windows 7 was the best OS they ever built. It just went downwards from there, and they abandoned it essentially.
I don't understand what's going on at Microsoft, but they leave huge stacks of money on the table. LTSC versions weren't "popular", they were the least worst option for a lot of industries. And now they kinda completely ignored all customer feedback.
Microsoft managed to make every other release of Windows good.
95 good, NT 4 bad, 98 good, 98 SE bad, 2000 good, Me bad, XP good, Vista bad, 7 good...
The plan with Windows 10 was to light their desktop market share on fire in the hopes they could see iPads in the distance and try to chase them. Windows 11 was codenamed "give your toxic ex a second chance."
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XP SP2 was pretty good too.
As was Windows NT & 2000 for their time.
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It’s not about giving you a clean experience, it’s about setting you up as a constant cash cow hooked into and paying for all their services.
I hate adobes current business model and for that matter fusion360 as well. It’s all internet required bullshit but it’s making them tons of money and there are no viable alternatives.
Luckily Linux exists.
I'll add, with no disrespect intended to BSD, because they're serious OSes, but GPL is also a really good thing to have
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It could be a nice OS, if Microsoft didn’t go out of their way to make it awful.
I run Active Directory at home, for various reasons. I’ve got Group Policy in a good enough shape now that I’m not terribly troubled by Microsoft’s enshittification but it took substantial effort to get there, and it requires some work to maintain.
> consistent in it's UI and cleaned up from 40 years of inconsistencies
... While also maintaining their famous backwards compatibility?
That would require empathy.
lol, what's your point really? alternatives exists since very long time.
I put up with so much Windows crap over the years, and Windows 11 was the final straw. It’s not even the gaming OS anymore as Linux feels snappier and more stable for running games.
After using Linux just about everywhere else, I moved my main desktop/gaming rig to Linux about a year ago. (The last Windows install I have is my retro PC.)
I work in e-waste recycling, and it's my first Windows-free job. A family friend called me for advice on her old decrepit laptop. I told her about my work "laptop": a Surface Pro tablet with Linux. I just sold one to her, partially on the security and privacy advantages of Linux.
>I work in e-waste recycling
How does one get into this, preferably without having to be a yardie for a few years (I'm an electrician with a degree in chemistry)?
Fellow Win7Pro retro machiner.
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This was me after decades of running Windows. I'm now firmly on Debian (13).
I have been running Deb 13 on my primary workstation for a couple months, just as stable as Debian 12 I was running for years on my primary. I am able to do all of my programming work, virtual win/mac for compiling and able to play every Steam game I try with zero problems (BG3, CyberPunk, etc), all from a $500 mini-pc. Even bluetooth has had zero issue (which is usually a problem/pita)
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My work laptop used to be Thinkpad P1 before they enfored Dell hardware. The current win11 laptop needs to be replaced for stability issues, and I begrudgingly going to ask for a MacBook.
Until Linux has an alternative to anticheat, gaming on Windows is still king.
And until Linux implements similar abstractions in the Kernel akin to Filter Drivers in Windows, Linux will never have a proper anticheat.
I think “king” may be overstating it somewhat. While it’s true that there are some big titles with anticheat that won’t work on Linux, there are quite a few major titles that work fine, and in practice I’ve been able to use Linux as a gaming system for awhile now without issue. I primarily play Overwatch, The Finals, ARC Raiders, Rocket League and Age of Empires.
I think the success of the Steam Deck has really helped the situation, and the titles that are broken because of anticheat are not important enough to me to keep a Windows system around.
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Linux has working EAC. Any software not working on Linux is a Policy decision by the seller, not lacking features on the buyer.
Oh and rootkit level EAC? Expect that to go away on Windows too when MS finally gets sick of Crowdstrike and that ilk causing self inflicted Denial of Service attacks on whole economic sectors.
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The anticheat needs to be server-side to be credible, i.e. the game should be designed to only provide the information that client needs for fair play. I know this isn't easy, but it should be the goal.
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This is begging the question. Games on linux lack kernel anticheat because linux isn't very popular. Once linux is popular enough, then they will figure out a way to do anti cheat on it in a way that they consider acceptable. Valve already considers VAC good enough, because they want to support linux. Anti cheat on windows works the way it does because that's what's available on windows, on linux they'll figure out some other way.
Recent attacks on Ubisoft and Rainbow Six Siege have brought some interesting concern about the wisdom of having basically a kernel backdoor to the whole system installed and ready to be accessed in case of a company breach (not that this particular attack could allow that, but future scenarios might very well convert the user base into a botnet)
Not sure how much gamers with a modicum of awareness (already a minority) will care, but the risk is there. We could paraphrase that famous line to say that "The 'S' in 'Kernel anticheat' stands for Security".
> Until Linux has an alternative to anticheat, gaming on Windows is still king.
I'm glad none of the games that require this really appeal to me these days
To be honest, competitive online games are a small fraction of gaming and are more addictive than fun.
I don't mind Windows being relegated to a niche of the stuff that runs CS while Linux based OS works for every other purpose.
Anticheat is sloppy engineering
Not all gaming is multiplayer.
But I know what you mean. Another niche that really doesn't go well on Linux is VR.
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Anticheat blocks Linux deliberately. Its whole point is to check if you're running an unmodified copy of Microsoft Windows. Linux is not one, so unless it gets really really good at deception, it won't pass those checks.
It doesn't just check if a cheat process is running, because obviously cheats know not to let themselves be discoverable that way. Heck, there are hardware cheats now that simulate various PCIe devices but with extra sneaky DMA operations. (I bought one because it's a cheap way to have an FPGA in my computer)
It's a political problem, though. They don't pass Linux because few people don't buy their games just because they refuse to run on Linux. If people did do that, they'd have to change the anticheat, no matter the consequences. Probably higher cheating, since there is no true official blessed unmodified Linux system to compare against.
> Until Linux has an alternative to anticheat, gaming on Windows is still king.
Name one thing that needs it.
Anyone know if Helldivers 2 works on Linux now? Because I'd say if I can't stick with 10 much longer then I'm just going to format that partition.
Yes: https://www.protondb.com/app/553850
Personally I have been playing it on Arch Linux since release and it has always worked just fine, besides it being a deeply janky game regardless of OS.
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Funny enough, this is the game compatibility that convinced me that Linux was worthwhile switching over to.
With Arch Linux + the nvidia-open package, the Linux desktop experience is miles better than when I last tried in 2017 with Ubuntu
It worked on Linux since basically day 1, though I haven't played it in awhile so who knows if things have broken since then.
I've been playing it on linux since I started. Just run steam, install, Start.
Happy diving.
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This is not good to hear, at my work we have the production technicians activate the occasional Windows 7 PC via the phone. We do it this way as these are specialized embedded PC’s that won’t connect to the internet. Flippant comments to “just use Linux” are not understanding the realities of keeping 20yr old software in the medical, offshore drilling, etc industries.
"Just use Windows" seems to be more problematic than "just use Linux" here. Though there is hope that WINE will reach enough feature parity for many applications, accessing external hardware is the hardest thing to emulate.
Building products on top of Windows seems to limit the lifetime of the product to whatever support Microsoft seem to be willing to provide.
The best time to migrate off Windows was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
Windows 7 activation was cracked long ago and you already paid MS for it, so I would just go that route.
The phone activation process has moved to a website instead of a phone number. It doesn’t mean the OS to be activated needs an internet connection. You can still activate offline systems.
It's Neowin so the information posted is half right. The device you are activating doesn't need internet. https://visualsupport.microsoft.com/ has the enter code from pc and get activation code
AFAIK Windows 11 IoT, which is intended for exactly these kinds of environments, can be activated via phone and LAN without internet.
Microsoft isn't abandoning these markets. They've been min-maxing consumer software enshittification for years now and doing an extremely good job, but they still have good options for enterprise.
> Flippant comments to “just use Linux” are not understanding the realities of keeping 20yr old software in the medical, offshore drilling, etc industries.
I make such comments. Tell me: what exactly is problematic about medical, offshore drilling, etc industries which makes it difficult or impossible to switch?
... wanna hire me to work on that? I am convinced that, whatever the cost is, it will be cheaper than using software on a very-outdated very-proprietary operating system for another couple of decades.
To name a few (presumably): drivers, proprietary protocols, vendor warranties/support, licensing/relicensing, paying you to do the work, waiting for the work to be done/tested, paying for workforce re-training, justifying this to management etc.
All these reasons suck, but they’re all reality in one industry or another sadly.
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The issues are not technical, they are documentation and certification. Here is the specifications for medical device software [1] [2]. You can either keep using a legacy (windows-based) software package, or find the need to verify/validate the entirety of linux and all drivers and packages (software-of-unknown-providence aka. SOUP). You then have to devise a patching schedule/methodology, as right now you just tell the end user to apply the Windows security patches if they’d like. This is a high-cost that is hard to argue for despite the obvious advantages.
[1] https://www.iso.org/standard/38421.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_62304
Great. Let me know where you're going to find someone to certify it.
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Using windows 7 in 2025 for those industries seems a massive liability ?
20 year old software is probably also going to have a hard time running on windows 11, even with all their compatibility layers packed up
I wonder what's their endgame. I mean, if it keeps getting worse, at some point they will really bleed users.
Even if for now the stats (e.g. steam hardware survey), show only a slight increase in Linux users (and a lot of them could be dual booting)
> a lot of them could be dual booting
I should have a valid license for windows, my Win 8 Pro license (which I paid full price for, like $150) should have worked for Windows 10 (and then transfered to 11) but it's not working anymore for whatever reason, I probably upgraded without disabling the key somewhere or whatever. So when I use Windows I have that "activation required" nag watermark now. When microsoft finally remotely kills my unactivated windows 10 install (a week from now? 6 months?) I'm just not going back. The only reason I dual boot these days is fusion 360 CAD and there's a steam install on there so it's probably showing up as a windows install even though I haven't played games on there in probably years.
Windows will probably continue on forever simply due to inertia but this "you have to have a web login to use your private computer" b.s. is going to turn off a lot of consumers, and this will be the watershed moment where Proton/Wine finally moves from 5, to 10 or 15% of users
> what's their endgame
Cloud-based profit. The "computer user" model is dead.
right, "everything is a monthly or annual license or we want none of it" is where they are headed. Cloud makes that even easier.
This is the reason. The rent-to-compute model is being pushed so hard.
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Try the internet without an adblocker. The typical user will put up with a lot of pain.
So will the typical developer these days, unfortunately.
Keep milking the cash cows to pay for the new growth area (AI). Convert maximum % of Windows users into subscription service consumers (e.g. cloud storage, Office 365, future paid AI capabilities.)
Also, they haven't cared about Windows 11 consumer sales for decades. It's not a coincidence that it's easier to crack Windows 11 than it was to crack Windows XP.
Microsoft's cloud/AI services are high-margin and lock users into a subscription, i.e. a consistent revenue stream. Windows is to be a marketing/cross-selling channel for those businesses first and foremost.
They very likely foresee the demise of PC as a platform altogether and are trying their best to shepherd us into their other products.
I'm not sure anyone at Microsoft has any endgame in mind for Windows. The devs are just working on what they're being told to work on, which aren't the parts conducive to happy consumers, while the execs are working on instinct and telemetry without context, and thus are basically flailing with no actual goal in mind beyond the next quarter. Add in that there's little hope for Windows' market share to increase in any large way, and that there thus isn't much reason to spend loads of money or dev time on improving Windows, and there's no wonder that we've come to this point.
The endgame is to eliminate legacy support options. Dedicated phone lines for activation costs money. The overwhelming majority of people using Windows 11 have access to some form/time of internet.
This is also just for activation which is not required to use Windows 11. I don't understand the extreme reactions to this. This isn't 2001 anymore.
The endgame is obviously to sell you Office 365, and Xbox Game Pass. Every Windows user who isn't giving them ARR equals one skeptical eyebrow from wall street.
Windows is absolutely insufferable now. Offensive, defective, regressive, clumsy, slow garbage.
I 100% agree, I dual boot myself and get reminded on how horrible the user experience is as opposed to Fedora with KDE Plasma
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Replace personal PCs with thin clients that give you an RDP session to Azure? I'm pretty sure a cloud only / subscription based "agentic" OS is the goal for windows. And, conveniently, hardware prices are through the roof until (hopefully) the AI bubble pops.
This - they already renamed remote desktop to Windows App on my work Mac so the next step is just offering "secure computing environmens" for their corporate customers.
you will not own a computer, you will lease them, via a terminal.
and you will like it. so says MS.
They’re using their legacy OS and Office business to subsidize services (LinkedIn, GitHub, npm, vscode, teams, azure, etc).
Consider what our industry will look like once the surveillance as a service/enshittifcation that’s been implemented for windows is ported to those things.
Try switching away from the services I mentioned, and you’ll see why the strategy makes sense.
How did we get here from W2K? It's hard to think of a time when you could use software without internet connection or a phone line.
Two decades of turning screws.
The problem isn't just that new installs will require this, but if you are on Windows 11, there are a hundred accidental ways to create a Microsoft account. Sometimes it's disguised as an update, or a sneaky notification. Sometimes it's onedrive, or you are trying to login via Edge. It reminds me of how Google was trying to trick us all into getting a Google+ account.
MS: "One way or another, you are creating an account so help me God."
I don't mind an MS account to be honest.
My problem is that Windows fucks up my user name when I log in to my account when setting up a new machine. I drives me up the wall.
My name is Daniel. My name on my MS account is Daniel. When I log in to a new Windows machine, the fucking thing decides my user name, and therefore my user folder, is "Danie". This is NOT my name, it's a different name that is not mine and it makes my computer grating to use every time.
For some retarded reason, windows does not allow online account users to have a username longer than 5 chars, so it goes and truncates whatever the first name it gets back from the mothership when logging in. A local account does not have this issue.
How about requiring a ms account to activate?
Have they closed the double install trick?
1. Install once with ms account and activate.
2. Reinstall offline with local account.
3. It will be activated when you go back online.
I suspect the remote server remember your computer hardware generated guid
Hm, when I set up the pre-installed Windows 11 on my mother's new laptop, I was able to set it up without any Microsoft account at all (she never had one and doesn't want one). I remember that it was possible by running some command at one point during the setup process. Is that also gone by now?
Yes, it's gone: https://pureinfotech.com/microsoft-blocks-windows-11-microso...
As someone who hasn't used Windows in a long time, could you explain the benefit of doing a double install like that? I.e., if you stopped at step #1, it's activated, so what purpose does step 2 serve?
To have a local account
This is the reason Windows is essentially free.
I believe once( this is an urban legend) a manufacturer in a middle income country considered going with Linux to save money and Microsoft flew out a sales rep next day to put a stop to it.
Microsoft likes it when you get a "deal" and buy a pro key for 10$. Whatever, you'll subscribe to half a dozen Microwave services ideally paying them 30$ to 40$ a month forever.
The last thing they want is you to try Linux.
However, I had the joy of watching multiple Linux desktop environments crash when I switched to my Bluetooth headphones.
Cinnamon and Budgie both crashed. No one knows why. I had to switch to Mate and then spend another 20 minutes trying to get it look ok.
No typical user wants to deal with this. They'd assume Linux doesn't work and move on.
Some mornings when I wake my laptop from sleep, my USB webcam doesn't work. No matter how many times I plug and unplug, no dice. Sometimes the wifi just refuses to connect to my network. Only a full reboot fixes things.
Sometimes, while I do things on a browser, I get a BSOD, no warning.
Some mornings, usually when I left important work open and half finished the night before, my computer decides to do an update and all my open windows, tabs, reference documents etc are gone, as if someone came and cleared my workbench mid project and now I need to set up all my shit again from scratch.
My personal laptop is a 10 year old POS thinkpad T-something with Linux Mint. Biggest issue is I forget to properly shut it down, and to plug it in every now and then, and the shot battery runs down. Admittedly, the bluetooth is sometimes a little iffy, but I've spent 0 effort trying to resolve it. I just open the lid, and my computer is ready for me. Boots up in an instant and always in the state I left it in (unless I let the battery run down).
My new, modern, high spec, high ram, high-res laptop is easily an order of magnitude more frustrating to use than my linux shitbox laptop.
I quit my job, and bought the laptop from the company. It's getting a wipe this weekend and some flavour of linux, and the wife is getting it as a belated christmas gift. She's due an upgrade, and I decided she's ready to move to linux now.
Windows tends to be a black box. It works or not. Your options to fix a bad Windows install are usually reinstalling or hoping the next update fixes it..
However, on average Windows has less issues with compatibility, particularly on newer hardware. I had a laptop that had a brand new chip, and I pre ordered it so it arrived before the Linux support did.
I could never get Linux to work correctly. It eventually failed for unrelated reasons.
You have to test Linux on your hardware the day you get it. Some laptops will never work with Linux. You can argue the hardware oems are to blame, but that doesn't fix anything.
I'm actually hoping to get a really cheap used Thinkpad soon and experiment with Nix.
>I believe once( this is an urban legend) a manufacturer in a middle income country considered going with Linux to save money and Microsoft flew out a sales rep next day to put a stop to it.
non urban legend: Munich migrated whole city (15K computers) to Linux saving millions. Microsoft moved their German HQ to Munich to win back the contract, and year later city announced removing linux and going back to windows.
I'm using Fedora with KDE Plasma, and at this point I can assure you that I run into more annoyances with Windows than Fedora
Linux has the reputation of being buggy and hard to fix, so some people don't put any effort in finding the solution, but windows has its fair share of issues too.
The problem is with Linux you have a bunch of different "fixes". I like Cinnamon. I've used desktop Linux for a long time. I have no idea how to fix this aside from switching to Mate.
You have almost unlimited permutations of different distros, kernels, etc. Which combination will work for you ?
No one knows. Will the next kernel update bring relief? I will say when you get a Linux system working, it's the most productive experience you can have. Microsoft isn't constantly begging for more money.
It's not like Windows hasn't had a slew of bullshit like this over the years. Especially around audio and peripherals. It still changes my default headphones every time I log in, doesn't recognise my standard audio interface, it's a crapshoot if my USB devices are all recognised every boot.
Was it the city government of Munich? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21497372
Yeah, but now we have AI to handhold people in troubleshooting Linux issues, so huzzah, the golden age is upon us.
I never thought it would happen, but now I use Linux about 95% of the time. These days, I rarely touch Windows. It feels like Microsoft’s higher-ups never found a clear direction for the OS, focusing more on saturating the market than on maintaining quality. :(
FWIW, as a former NTSE, I abandoned Windows in the late '90s when, within a 2 year period they:
- Embedded IE making multi-version browser testing an absolute PITA
- Rolled out WGA and screwed up bulk-licensing and multi-tier/versioned licensing for cluster operations and emerging mobile hardware
- Allowed arbitrary code to be embedded in the registry
I think Windows has improved as a basic OS tremendously in the past decade, with things like WSL, winget, terminal, storage spaces, fancyzones and such. The components of perhaps the best general purpose OS available right now are there, but they are buried behind a crappy car-salesman tabloid-press upsell circus that is frankly unbearable to some users.
What I don't get is why MS refuses to let you pay to avoid the circus - It's like a streaming service that only has the ad-financed tier!
I get that the people who care are a minority, but charging that minority a high purchase price for a just-the-os version of windows seems like easy money and would let them dodge all the badwill by presenting a choice.
Right now the official option is simply "suffer the circus or leave". It should at least be amended with "or pay".
My feeling is they would never do that because it would implicitly admit that stuff is bad and people don’t want it so much they’re willing to pay a lot to remove it.
I used to work at Microsoft in the Windows team (XP/2003/Longhorn/Vista/7).
The product today doesn’t feel like the product I worked on; I feel no connection to it, and every time I think that there’s nothing they could do to make me dislike it any more, Microsoft has another “hey, hold my beer and watch this” moment.
The problem with the old Microsoft this that it was run by engineers who didn’t understand user experience. The problem now is that it’s run by MBAs who dont care about users, just licenses.
i recently upgraded a computer. windows 10 deactivated itself due to the hardware change. i tried everything i could to reactivate. microsoft support told me my only solution was to buy a new license. microsoft treats its customer with contempt.
If you can deupgrade... Deupgrade, make sure it reactivates, then create a local account tied to a microsoft account and reboot and check activation page until it says activated with your microsoft account.
Then upgrade and reboot until it deactivates, then it should let you fix it with your microsoft account... Once that happens, you can remove the microsoft account from your computer.
At that point, find a reseller site and buy a key for cheap or just don't activate Windows at all. I don't think you lose much "features" when leaving it unactivated. It's not worth your time to deal with Microsoft support over Windows activation keys in 2026.
I'm curious did you have an OEM license or a retail license? OEM licenses die with the mobo.
OEM licenses are for the computer, not the motherboard. The online activation historically hasn't worked if you change motherboard, but the phone line folks would always activate it for you if you explained that it was the same computer with a different motherboard.
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i bought a builder license from newegg in 2017. unfortunately i was not diligent about saving the product key. this was actually the third time i had been in this scenario after changing hardware. no idea why it wouldn’t work this time around.
we should all come together and collectively kill the idea of using a windows based operating system unless they get their stuff together and give us an AI free, bloat free, single page with 10000 settings configurable for privacy and security and a promise of updating only once a month with full opt out
People should switch to Linux. I started using Fedora on Cosmic and it is great!
Mint is very similar to Windows UI
Kills ONE official way to activate Win11/10 without internet. There's still KMS and other methods... Article title is slightly misleading.
Sure, it sucks about the phone activation thing, but frankly... STOP USING WINDOWS ALREADY.
So, how airgapped systems are supposed to get activated from now on?
You pay a lot of money for a special contract, or you plug it into the internet. Whether from incompetence or malice, Microsoft would strongly prefer you did the latter.
I wonder if Microsoft will ever turn ship with Windows, or will it all be a decline until it is no longer needed.
At this point it is really only just a vehicle to drive more traffic to office365 (or whatever weird name microsoft is calling it this week).
lets ask SEARS
I've been running openSUSE tumbleweed myself for years, and recommend Linux to like-minded power users. OP is preaching to the choir.
How do you all deal with (extended) family? This Christmas I spent time with my parents and the topic of Windows 11 came up again with all of its associated dark patterns.
What do you all do to help them out of this madness? Is Ubuntu/Fedora/etc the best option for seniors? My dad's entire career was in Silicon Valley 1.0 where Excel/Outlook was his bread and butter and feels married to Windows, but ever since leaving the workforce those skills are more of a hindrance than an asset.
Now that he's retired, he still uses Excel to plan vacations for example, but Windows is riddled with this BS and I am powerless to help him navigate this anti-consumer behavior. It's incredible that Microsoft is shooting their most loyal customers in the foot with this BS.
Do you all help your parents remotely? What kind of issues do you run into being your parents IT support?
Senior care and technology is going to be a gold rush over the next couple decades. Society is not prepared for the only generation who grew up on the internet to regress into mental infirmary while still believing technology is an essential need.
For those of you who haven't already had to deal with today's 70 year old MCI sufferers and technology, it is already a complete shitshow, and that generation lived half their adult lives without mobile technology.
Imagine finding 12 renewing subscriptions to malwarebytes and other security suites. Or having to burn credit cards every month because they can no longer tell the difference between ads/scams and actual needs. Microsoft, of course, helpfully shovels those scams straight to them via the operating system now. The corporations of America have figured out that milking our elders is good for a quick buck, and it is in their interests to make sure no safety nets are in place. Once they are required, they'll game whatever that system is too.
It is all the control battles our parents fought with their parents over driving, but now it is about the phone/tablet/computer, but not being able to take the phone away as a practical matter because the (first) world expects everyone to have them.
SSO and recovery keys are a problem for proxy account administrators - especially with the banking and medical sectors which still rely solely on SMS. Sites such as login.gov won't allow multiple accounts to have the same phone number. So if both you and your parents need accounts for social security, you as the caregiver can't use your phone as the second factor for their account.
For added fun, many organizations, including banks and the US Government/various federal pension boards, refuse to recognize a power of attorney letter, either. The entire modern situation leaves caregiver children having to commit technical TOS violation/fraud/perjury just to get accounts reset or to (re)gain access to submit address changes.
> For added fun, many organizations, including banks and the US Government/various federal pension boards, refuse to recognize a power of attorney letter, either.
Ouch! That's got to make things hard!
That's thankfully not a problem where I live. Here the problem is more that the banks might be a little over-eager to take agency away from seniors, since once they get a whiff of their grandson helping them with their banking and what not, they lock their account and claim to have broken their TOS or the law regarding not having other people control their account, and that if you want people to do that, you need that power of attorney.
Honestly, this is a lot better than the alternative of not being vigilant enough, and I'd honestly argue that it's better to let there be as little shame as possible in handing over your banking to your next of kind, so that when it starts getting really bad, it's not too late. But this obviously gets very individual very quickly. One senior will handle their banking just fine until their 105, while the next gets Alzheimer at 55, while the next starts to have to put a lot more effort into doing it right at 75, but they don't have any next of kin they can trust to not slowly empty their savings account once they get the power of attorney.
Thanks for bringing up the point about power-of-attorney, I'll have to dive into that as well.
I dread the day I have to get more involved in their healthcare from afar, precisely because of the technology gap. The money grab from big-pharma is going to unrelenting
My mum is in her late 80s and only lives about a 40 minute drive away, but generally needs no support to use Linux on her PC.
She switches it on, double-clicks the Firefox icon, and it opens up.
That's it. That's the whole thing. I did originally have it set to just launch Firefox full screen on startup, but she didn't like it like that.
> She switches it on, double-clicks the Firefox icon, and it opens up.
> That's it. That's the whole thing. I did originally have it set to just launch Firefox full screen on startup, but she didn't like it like that.
I don’t know why, but I immediately thought of the cake mix that was created that originally included egg powder so you just had to add water but people didn’t feel like they were really baking so they removed it and have you add eggs which made people happy and it became super popular.
Something about not wanting Firefox to just open automatically and wanting to double click it instead gave me the same vibes haha.
i think a senior thats coming from windows would probably be better off trying zorinOS. even something as minor as the taskbar being in the "wrong" place on ubuntu could be enough to turn a lot of people off
You use the taskbar. Your parents do not.
They click on the browser icon and that's all they ever use.
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This is why Windows will get away with it.
As much as Windows is deeply flawed, the user interface challenges with Linux are difficult to overcome. Until there is a version of Linux where you don’t have to open the console, Windows will keep its market.
> Until there is a version of Linux where you don’t have to open the console
This is already the case from the Grandma use case, i.e. nothing more than a web browser and maybe Thunderbird and an office program. The terminal issue doesn't come up until you start getting into people who know just enough to be dangerous (myself included).
The larger issue is that computers with Linux pre-installed are (within a rounding error) not a thing, and thus Grandma can't go out and buy one. Telling her to install it on her current computer makes about as much sense to her as asking her to flob the nerfwhizzle. And even if she could, would she place her bets on a (to her) completely new computer system? Not without help or solid recommendations from trusted sources.
My old man has been running Linux for nearly 20 years now. I PROMISE not only that he has never once opened a console, but would spontaneously combust if you suggested it. (I have used a command line on his computer a few times in those two-ish decades, when doing my very rare tech support, but that's just because that's the fastest way for me to get anything done.)
Maybe Windows back in e.g. Windows 2000 days would have some sort of claim to user interface discoverability and predictability which no Linux distribution would have. That ship has sailed; Windows today is a shitshow.
> How do you all deal with (extended) family? This Christmas I spent time with my parents and the topic of Windows 11 came up again with all of its associated dark patterns.
The mom and dad gen are all on iPads or just phones from what I can tell. Very few people there use PCs for their personal computing (work is another matter, but mostly not relevant to this discussion), and those that do are more power user-y. This group largely don't need help beyond edge cases in my experience.
The grandma and grandpa generation are mostly the same story, but there's a lot more who have more or less just bailed completely outside of the absolute essentials (online banking, literal phone calls). Some are still on PCs out of a desire to not change things too much, but I'd imagine switching them over to an iPad is probably an overall improvement once you can get past the unwillingness to shift over to another system. The fact that Windows 11 is such hot garbage will hopefully aid in convincing people of that.
For those who still want a PC, there's Linux. My grandma is on Mint, but that's just because I'm her personal tech support. If I weren't around, she'd have bought a Windows 11 machine from whatever idiot at the local electronics store. I can't imagine that would have gone very well. She'd have probably bailed completely on computing if it came to that.
Very few people in this group of people need software beyond what basic Linux can provide, so Linux should be able to provide a better environment than Windows, but that are loads of potential edge cases, but they're all very small, but all very annoying if you find yourself in one.
> What kind of issues do you run into being your parents IT support?
Mom and Dad: 'Hey, can you help me with this website?' -> 'It's broken, try again tomorrow.' or 'Try that button there.'.
Grandma: See previous.
'How do I do [thing that hasn't changed since Windows 95]'?
'What do I do here?' -> 'Read the message on the screen and act accordingly.'
'My mouse doesn't work!' -> 'Check the batteries.'
Most of these later issues are because she treats the computer mechanistically, one unchanging step at a time, so if anything doesn't go to plan, she functionally panics. I don't know how to solve this problem, but it seems endemic to me given how common of a trope it is in stories from computer savvy people helping the not-so-savvy.
I can't remember where I heard about it, but it probably comes from the fact that a large-ish portion of the population can't connect concepts to things that don't have tangible forms. Thus, all the invisible processes inside any computer (files, memory, networking) that any computer savvy person will be aware of, don't exist and don't make sense in the mind of the not computer savvy, since it has no tangible form. You can find a similar case with office phone systems. Transferring a call is apparently hard for a number of people, since a call isn't a tangible item, doing anything with it makes zero sense. At best you can get them to place calls on hold, but that's only because their office phone will have buttons with blinking lights that say 'Line 1' and 'Line 2' on them, and they can thus easily connect the light blinking with the call on hold. Suddenly it's tangible, and thus it can make sense.
Great points. I had at least three of your example scenarios occur between my parents and I within the last couple days.
The more time I spend online the more I'm convinced I have never had a unique experience.
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AFAICT this doesn't affect activating via a KMS server (incl. KMS emulators like vlmcsd), correct?
I've been a windows user my whole life, only interacting with Linux servers remotely via shell. I've become quite familiar with command line Linux, but never used a graphical operating system.
My next PC will be Linux.
distrosea is good place to start if youre not sure what you want yet. it runs full distros online and you only need a browser to connect to them. its a quick way to get a feel for which desktop would suit you best
https://distrosea.com
http://distrowatch.org/
As well has great resources in to Linux distributions.
Having gone through the same route, just a tip: try different desktop environments.
Have I discovered KDE sooner, it wouldn't have taken me so long to make the switch.
I just hated all the other DE and 5 minutes with KDE, I was deeply in love.
Phones with propietary spyware and bloatware and with the root user locked. Desktop OSes with enforced updates overriding your settings and choices, up to the point to reinstall back the same adware.
The negativity in this thread is amusing. I can’t take HN seriously anymore, you guys crack me up with your flimsy outrage and dramatic monologues.
I’ll be upgrading to Win 11 and activating it with an internet connection. And I won’t think twice about it.
Looks like everyone gets the OS they deserve.
Did you miss the quotation marks around “upgrading”?
Good for you?
This is just so bizarre. Like 90% of the people wouldn't even know you COULD activate without an MS account and the remainder will just use Rufus to bypass restrictions. So what is MS actually "fixing"?
Does the Rufus bypass still work after these changes?
I still can't get over that when I go to the "Accounts" screen of Windows 11 control panel there's no option to add a new local account.
Windows activation has been a game of CTF for me since the early 2000s. I've got more than enough resources to pay for a Win11 license many times over. But I refuse to. Part is something approximating "I've already paid the windows tax 30+ times" but it's more than this. The UX regression from the XP era is shocking when you put things side by side.
I happily paid $500 for a perpetual VS2026 license just a few days ago, but I'll continue to use things like massgrave for windows no matter how big my cash pile grows. I know it's the same company, but it's really not about the money. It's about sending some kind of a message regarding software quality.
If you could give me an experience identical to VS on Linux I would move in an instant. But it simply doesn't exist. It's frankly not even close after all these years. VSCode is like the IDE "we have at home". Linux is a great target for many things now (e.g., steam deck), but using it as my daily driver development platform is still a non-starter.
I know it's possible to make anything work on Linux, but that's not a very compelling argument for me anymore. It's got to work well. The experience can't suck ass. Even the steam deck was a herky jerky OOBE with WiFi/networking woes and 5-6 reboots to get it going. That's with Gabe Newell ~in charge using billions of dollars to make it go smoothly. I don't have access to those kinds of resources so I figure why even try. I've already thrown ~5k hours into the Linux hole over my lifetime. I don't think it's an investment that has paid off very well for me. Linus himself has acknowledged that the win32 ABI is the most stable and well designed he's ever seen. Why wouldn't I follow his advice?
As someone who has never really liked Visual Studio compared to alternatives (especially the JetBrains suite), I’m genuinely curious what experience you’re getting that you can’t get elsewhere?
Same as the win32 ABI - stability over time. I've been able to build up two decades worth of muscle memory because the product has been very consistent over my career. Rider has "only" been on the market for 8 years. I've actually tried this and many of the alternatives. It's not that they're invalid tool choices. They just don't stick for me.
Relearning things like hotkeys for step [in/out/over] is a nonstarter. I don't really have patience to customize a complex tool like VS or Rider. I've made a point of getting comfortable with the default settings so that no employer or client can ruffle my feathers with locked down machines, etc. You can put me on a completely vanilla windows+VS dev box in an air gapped environment and I would be as happy as a clam.
If windows is anything like navigating Azure and other developer platforms of Microsoft, I don’t want it. How is that a multi trillion dollar company?
Finding more modern ways to be lame and making it easier for folks to either pirate (use shady activation methods) or move to other platforms.
It's a bit wild that I can't use Windows 10 on my new hardware because manufacturers didn't bother to make the drivers. With how much peiple hate Win11 it seems like a rushed move.
One was laptop sound driver, the other was wifi motherboard driver.
I thought windows 10 and 11 used the same drivers though. Did they change something in the driver stack?
That was my assumption as well. However it was proven false in these two cases.
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I wonder how PC gaming is going to look in few years with Nvidia slashing GPU supply, RAM manufacturing going down the ai drain and Windows becomming even less attractive than it used to be.
Maybe next AAA stuff will start to target ARM and natively ARM OSes?
I have a windows laptop (and a mac) for work. The windows laptop gets turned on, connected to my limited guest network, only when work yells at me that it hasn't had its security patches recently and in the extremely rare times I need it to do a full build (I'm trying to get our build process away from windows specific. I got the parts I work on away at least). I used MS DOS v2.0. I knew every setting inside and out and had all the tricks down through windows XP. I grudgingly used it up until 5 years ago when I couldn't take MS destroying the OS and user experience any more. Since I switched I have never looked back. Not once have I thought 'Gee, I wish I had a windows box'. Even for gaming. Especially for 'productivity' apps like word and the like. MS used to be THE OS for developers. You built apps for windows because the best tools to build apps were there and the best experience developing was there. Now I have no idea who they are building an OS for other than corporations. It is painful. It is bloated. It is invasive. It isn't intuitive. It can't be trusted. Every time I see windows I cringe and am thankful there are actual alternatives. Good luck MS. You are only being used by people that have to or don't understand they have another option. Lock-in is their only advantage.
I love how people keep saying it’ll be the year of linux desktop with this news. While Windows, keeps thriving in the desktop market. Because one, most computer users want simplicity. Two, pc manufacturers bundle Windows because of reason one. Three, they want a familiar interface. Four, windows license is also bundled in pre-built PC and laptops. Five, even if someone were to build a PC themselves, because microsoft know people pirate windows so much, they actually allow people to use windows without activating! What feature they lose without license? Personalization. That’s it! And six, ordinary people never watch/read tech related channels/websites to begin with knowing what linux even is! Despite i’m a linux user (in the past, now on servers) myself, i won’t say “it’s the year of linux desktop.” Because people refuse to learn new things. Oh my god. *sigh.
The only way this epidemic of Microsoft would end if a Linux company has a monetary incentive to serve customers.
My mother doesn't need to worry about typing `chmod` into her android mobile terminal.
Does your mother know how to install a device driver on Windows? None of the non-technical people I know can't fix anything on their computers.
I've been doing experiments over the last 10 or so years, I've been borrowing my Linux laptops to people, and to my surprise, they had absolutely no problem using it. Especially children, you just start using GNOME as if it's nothing. They are already used to different phones, different kinds of computers, it really makes no difference to them. Your mother is probably checking gmail, watching youtube, and maybe writing google docs, not much else.
> Your mother is probably checking gmail, watching youtube, and maybe writing google docs, not much else.
Condescending.
My mother shouldn't need to mess with udev rules to play music to her Bluetooth Speaker because she uses a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard.
She also doesn't want to hang about waiting for systemd to shutdown X out of Y retries when she turns off the desktop because the bluetooth speaker had gone awol.
She also uses a wacom tablet which requires more configuration. Windows provides Plug & Play, and then works. Linux provides Plug & Play with lumps requiring configuration outside of a USB stick.
Can we stop pretending that linux is perfect and in a state for non-techies to swap over? It's potential but still not suitable for the average user. Watching streaming services natively isn't possible without some sort of a hack.
I do it for a job, I don't want to be further support for her outside of. She's an 70-year old illustrator so Photoshop is a must. Her friends who are in their 50's are the same. Linux even after retraining wouldn't gel with them.
Krita, GIMP, are not alternatives for her. Heck, she even maintains her own website.
My father is a historian. He has archives of history stuff bottled away on applications that are not *nix. Yes Wine is suitable for that but that again another set of obstacles.
Well, one company is doing already that. It's Valve and their ongoing work on proton, steam deck (which runs on linux) and much more in that space.
Add it to the list. I won't install another Windows machine, after more than two decades of Windows at home.
I guess mildly privacy concious gamer was not one of target their demographics.
does this affect massgrave.dev?
Kills one way. They engineered activation as a hydra. There's several other options remaining.
> For the fastest and most convenient way to activate your product, please visit our online product activation portal at aka.ms/aoh
God these companies are insufferable.
Microsoft really wants to alienate users.
(as a person whose "year of the Linux desktop" was literally 30 frickin' years ago) Oh no! Anyway...
My version of that is to just use a (high-end) Chromebook. The OS never gets in the way, can’t remember the last time I had to change a system setting or manually upgrade anything
Good on them. Just hastening the inevitable shift to Linux. I don't even care what they do anymore.
> Just hastening the inevitable shift to Linux
i do feel the ecosystem isn't broad enough for linux to become consumer facing. E.g., if you buy a random chinese made writing tablet and tried using it on linux, it has less than even chance of working straight out the box.
Similarly with bluetooth, wifi (for laptops), etc.
The problem is that OEM are locked into windows, so you have the chicken/egg problem where OEM won't want to spend effort on linux compatibility without a large customer base, and customer base won't grow unless they know for sure it is always going to work for _any_ piece of hardware they might purchase.
May be steam machine and valve could be the push it needs to establish a large customer base.
I have a writing tablet from who knows where that my brother gave me and it works flawlessly on Linux.
Windows 11 is a thin client for the Microsoft cloud. It's not surprising that you have to activate it online, and that you can no longer use it without a Microsoft account. That's the whole point.
People who complain that Windows isn't what they want are missing the point. Windows isn't for you. macOS, Linux, and more obscure choices still exist for general purpose computing. SteamOS or various Steam focused Linux distros exist for gaming. ChromeOS exists as a less offensive and more reliable thin OS.
Trying to force Windows into being something it isn't is a waste of your time.
Always reminds me of the quote "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." by T. J. Watson Sr.
The quote is usually delivered as a punchline of sorts, but we're rapidly approaching a world where there truly will be only five computers. If you define a computer as a system capable of truly general purpose computing, and if you count the computers as systems each capable of operating truly independently of the others. The term "general purpose" needs the further qualification, that a great deal of power and political capital will be needed to have any say in what purpose one of these five computers will be put to, and it will then be forced on the other people who are forced to work with that computer.
what a coincidence, I'm switching fully over to linux tomorrow
Just get a Mac and stop worrying about this stuff
Seriously. Hacker News is so adamant on Linux it's almost comical. I mean, I get it... this is a site for developers. But I'm a developer and MacOS is great for writing software, the hardware is better than everything else on the market by far, and I don't have to mess around with my computer just to get certain drivers or whatever to work.
I spent $1000 on a Macbook Air, it instantly works with zero headache, has way more app support than Linux, is super fast, and so on.
If I want to play games, I bought the cheapest gaming laptop from Best Buy for like $500 a few years ago and only use that computer to play games.
Windows server is the best Windows os (can be use as a client os) but it's still Windows shit.
Nothing wrong with Windows Server Core, which has zero UI. Managed totally with Powershell, which once you get used to it, is an excellent shell/scripting language.
Powershell is really good. For scripting you get the whole C# standard library and can write cmdlets in C# itself.
People who care about Windows, lol.
This is the result of indification of microsoft as a whole.
The what now?
Upgrading to Windows 11 tomorrow for my new gaming pc. Really looking forward to it. Mostly so I can use the new Phone Link functionality to get my iMessages on my desktop.
Do yourself a favor and stick to Windows 10. ISOs are still available on Microsoft's website and you can use local accounts and activate ESU using any of the scripts available on GitHub.
Even better, use the LTSC releases.
I’ve been using 11 on my laptop for years. I honestly think it’s fine. I spend 99% of my time in a game or IntelliJ.
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is that fully functional, or still limited to 1:1 conversations?
Not sure l, I honestly haven’t looked at it since its initial release. Either way, 1-1s are all I really care about.
Related raging about this nerd/tech-niche problem 3 months ago:
Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45497384