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Comment by ihsw

1 day ago

If you have been reading the news about Windows 11 then I will enlighten you -- they view the Windows 11 consumer business as a cost center that must be mitigated.

As such, all manner of monetization has been approved and it will continued to be approved without regard for user experience.

This article obviates that this is not an LG problem, it is a Microsoft problem.

Also, don't fool yourself if you think this won't come to the Linux world.

Just look at Microsoft’s revenue breakdown that they publish. Windows revenue is alarmingly small.

I don’t think it’s a loss leader but Microsoft gets almost nothing from OEM Windows licenses and basically nobody buys it retail.

This is not coming to the Linux world. The moment this sort of thing happens, distros get forked.

  • Aren’t ms completely dependent on consumer windows for mindshare?

    I doubt anyone would bother getting into programming with ms tech unless they just happened to run it on their desktop.

    • I don't think they are anymore. The vast majority of ordinary person computer/internet use has already moved to smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and other such devices. It seems nowadays many people don't even know the basics about how to use a desktop operating system.

      9 replies →

    • Microsoft will happily sell you someone else’s tech stack on Azure.

      My macOS-using employer gives much more money to Microsoft than Apple.

      Cloud SaaS things they’re using: Entra ID, Power BI, Sharepoint, corporate email (365), OneDrive.

      Microsoft applications installed by my employer on my PC: Teams, Office including Outlook, Defender.

      Our applications are Java running on Linux and we could migrate 100% of our platform to Azure without any issue if we had a reason to do that.

    • MS owns Typescript and NPM and Azure and LinkedIn. I know you meant programming on Windows, but even if Windows disappears, many of us will owe our job to Microsoft.

      6 replies →

  • >This is not coming to the Linux world. The moment this sort of thing happens, distros get forked.

    I installed Debian 13 recently. The first time I opened Firefox ESR (installed by default), I got something that looked like adverts on the home page (banner blindness means I have no memory of what they actually were, only of the feeling of disgust). The Home section of the Settings page had options for "Sponsored shortcuts" and "Sponsored stories" enabled by default. Changing a default setting is a lot easier than forking software, yet it was not done.

    • Rather than complaining to you that Firefox isn’t Linux, I’ll point out that Firefox is a great example.

      LibreWolf was forked to deal with the exact situation you describe.

As long as you have a computer that can run unsigned software, or software signed by yourself, this won't come to Linux as non-optional features: you can always recompile your kernel removing things you do not want like this.

  • And before anyone goes "but I can't patch that!", all it takes is one clever guy to write the patch.

    This is also why the bazaar model of Linux distributions is beneficial. You get more choice.

> don't fool yourself if you think this won't come to the Linux world.

I'm curious what you mean by this. I'm not necessarily rejecting the point, but I also don't see how this could happen without substantial shifts in the industry first.

  • Yeah, curious here too. Torvalds would need to pass first I think, and I just don't see other major players like RedHat, Google, Canonical, or Valve introducing this themselves or agreeing to do it in aggregate. And as end users we could still fork and patch it out. Some shitty company might try but I don't think it would stand.

    • Lots of bad ideas have come to Linux, like non-consensual telemetry, mobile-first interfaces etc. Don’t believe? Run OpenSnitch.

      Traditional CADT means features get lost over time.

      It is not immune from these forces, just not a focus by the powers that be. Fewer developers remember the good old days of Y2Kas as well, meaning they don’t resist these forces instinctively, since they grew up in iOS captivity.

      2 replies →

It hasn’t come for the much larger Mac world yet.

I think literally the only driver I’ve installed for any accessory of any kind is the config utility for a Stream Deck. I certainly never install mouse (thank you Steermouse!) or printer drivers, let alone a monitor driver of all things.