17 ms·

Microsoft might want to be making Windows 12 a subscription OS, suggests leak

61 points by el_hacker 3y ago

bakioka 3y ago
And people will continue pirating
orionblastar 3y ago
If Microsoft does, I am not using Windows 12, I am going to Ubuntu. I won't even pirate it. I refuse to pay a subscription for an OS, that should be pay once and be done paying.
- donkeybeer 3y ago
  I'd advise Debian over Ubuntu because Ubuntu is lately also similar forced bs by forcing snaps.
- Simulacra 3y ago
  I refuse to use windows 11, there's no positive reason for updating from windows 10. I'm with you.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Better chose another distro, https://ubuntu.com/pro/subscribe https://ubuntu.com/pro/subscribe
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    The presence of a paid version doesn't negate the free version.
  - selfhoster11 3y ago
    You can't be serious. This is a subscription of an entirely different kind, and most certainly will not be too useful for most people. So long you run an LTS release, you get a stable target that will remain stable and supported by security updates for 5 years. For free.
- ianceicys 3y ago
  You are already paying a subscription for an OS. How old is your computer, 4 years-5 years old? Take $200 (cost of OS) and it's $40 or $50 a year or $3-4 dollars a month. Same applies for Apple Mac OS you just pay the $200 in the price of the $2,000 computure.
  - itishappy 3y ago
    That's not a subscription, that's amortization. The critical difference is that amortization decreases your cost per unit time with use. More use, better value. Subscriptions do not work that way. Having to pay $50/year for a 5 year old laptop doesn't excite.
    - cptskippy 3y ago
      That's an oversimplification because it requires the utility of the device to be maintained over it's operational life. Routinely the utility of the device changes as new features are added or removed during OS upgrades, support for software, and eventually hardware support is dropped entirely. It doesn't matter if the hardware is still functional. This isn't even necessarily in the vendor's control. For example, Google Chrome just stopped loading TLS encrypted sites on my partner's MacBook this past week and displays a lovely pink banner over every tab saying the OS is no longer supported. Companies are not held to any standards for support and the amount of support they give varies based on the product. Apple has provided decades of support for some products but considerably less for others because they shared an architecture or platform that was eventually dropped. Google is notorious for just dropped support for products on a whim. And subscriptions won't fix this problem.
    - ianceicys 3y ago
      The problem with Amortization in the consumer space is the lifetime of the device. Sure, you can keep running a computer for year 6 instead of the standard 5 years...but 90% of consumers don't - What machines from 2016 are you using today? If you do, let's get serious you're already looking to upgrade in the near future, no?
      - 3y ago
- 3seashells 3y ago
  What Linux needs is a easier cross over layer.. Less loke dual boot and more vm alt tab into and out..
  - trelane 3y ago
    Microsoft could create this. They have no reason to. Nobody else could, because it would require Microsoft to agree to something that's against their interests.
    - rakoo 3y ago
      Isn't that WSL though ?
      - trelane 3y ago
        no, it's reverse WSL. LSW, if you will.
- rakoo 3y ago
  The problem is, in a capitalist world even libre/open source needs money to live. A race to thr cheapest is a loss for everyone in that kind of society. No OS is ever "done", there is always maintenance, security updates, ...
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I don't think that he was talking about not paying for software. I think he was talking about not renting software.
    - rakoo 3y ago
      Yes but what is the right price for a one-time payment of software ? If you're going to use maintenance, updates, all the work that comes after you paid, what do you consider is a correct price to pay in advance for all future changes ?
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        The "correct price" depends entirely on the specific software, so this is an impossible question to answer in its literal sense. > what do you consider is a correct price to pay in advance for all future changes ? You don't. Outside of security updates, which should never be charged for, you pay for the software as it exists when you buy it. When future changes come around, you buy the upgrade (if you want it). It's the tried-and-true method of charging for this stuff.
        rakoo 3y ago
        We're specifically talking about an OS here, so the scope is not really the same, but still: are you ok with no package updates ? No update to the documentation, the wiki, and stuff like that ? No forum or chat ?
        warrenm 3y ago
        >Outside of security updates, which should never be charged for Why shouldn't you be charged for for security updates?
- warrenm 3y ago
  >I refuse to pay a subscription for an OS, that should be pay once and be done paying. Sure But don't expect to get any updates to what you paid for - after all, updates are no longer the same OS
- mekster 3y ago
  There's a decent OS called MacOS that's somehow always free on major new releases...
  - orionblastar 3y ago
    It is bundled with hardware. I cannot afford it, I would rather go with Linux in my humble opinion.
Workaccount2 3y ago
I've wondered why microsoft hasn't done this already. The $oftware boys already have a full explainer about why $aa$ is the best thing since open source, so why shouldn't Microsoft jump on board too? C'mon SaaS devs, tell me again about value add and how you love paying monthly for the software you use...
- pjmlp 3y ago
  The alternative is that everyone thinks they can code an alternative during a weekend.
  - horsawlarway 3y ago
    Nah - the alternative is choosing software that is stable and open. Not some crazy "not made in house - gonna code it myself" crap... that seems like some weird personal thing. Approach software as a set of tools, with the expectation that you must learn and master its use, but then you will be functional and productive for a long time. That's what stand-alone installers or self-hosted alternatives are. They require more learning, but they don't sell you out, close down, jack up the price, or turn off features because it's "not generating new users". They also don't randomly rework the UI nearly as often because "if it's not shiny we can't sell it". But they do require more work and learning up front. For me, at least... that tradeoff is a clear and easy win. --- Good software is like good woodworking tools - hard to master, but very productive once you're there. SaaS is always the opposite: Super easy to start, incredibly frustrating to be a power user. Saas doesn't want power users - it wants more subscriptions.
    - libraryatnight 3y ago
      I agree. Stallman said something like when you don't control the tools you use to do work you don't control your life. It's true.
    - oblio 3y ago
      > Approach software as a set of tools, with the expectation that you must learn and master its use, but then you will be functional and productive for a long time. This does not scale to end users.
Simulacra 3y ago
I still haven't seen one good reason to upgrade from windows 10.
- NullPrefix 3y ago
  What made you leave windows 7?
  - rcoveson 3y ago
    Windows 9 was the only one worth using.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      That would be 2000 or NT (I always confuse those two for some reason...).
      - guraf 3y ago
        I'm sure you're making a clever joke and I'm just not getting it. All Windows branded as NT as well as 2000 (the first NT not branded as such) predate Windows 8 by over a decade, so I don't understand why you'd think one of them would be number 9.
        hef19898 3y ago
        Ah, my bad... I mean the last one worth using wasn't 9, but either 2000 or NT, which for the love of god always confuse nowadays despite having used both back the day... I think my preferred one of all time was 2000, but again not sure if actually was NT... I'm getting old... Edit: Just realized GPs joke... There never was a Windows 9... And it isn't even that late...
        dragonwriter 3y ago
        NT version numbers were weird, and major releases didn5 increment major version numbers, but if you the first major release (NT 3.1) as the next major windows version after Windows 3.x, (so as 4) you would get to 9 about Windows 2000 (this counts 3.51 as a major release.) Of course, that would leave out the consumer line starting with Win 95.
horsawlarway 3y ago
I am willing to believe that MS might try a subscription model, but this doesn't look like particularly strong evidence for it. Those strings could be anything - For all we know, it's just tracking office 365 subscription status/enterprise enrollment, or tracking windows account notification subscriptions, or any of a hundred other valid reasons. Those terms are just too generic to be particularly meaningful.
aNoob7000 3y ago
I think they will offer two options, advertising or advanced features. The advertising option speaks for itself. The will put ads in different parts of the O/S. Kiss goodbye to any privacy you thought you had. The features option will make more O/S options like photo and video editing apps a subscription type model. Pay $10 a year and get the advanced features. Either way, I think this should help Apple and open source operating systems.
- JohnClark1337 3y ago
  [dead]
- alanfranz 3y ago
  Usd 10/year is entirely reasonable. But I fear an higher fee.
  - fluoridation 3y ago
    If your average user buys a new version every 5 years and the Pro version costs $250, they could charge $50/yr. $10/yr would be quite generous, unless they think they can get lots of people to stop pirating the OS. $10/month seems like an unlikely price point.
    - kyriakos 3y ago
      I honestly don't understand why anyone would pirate windows. Its full featured if you don't activate apart from a watermark. If you choose to activate you can get an oem key for like 10 usd.
  - seanw444 3y ago
    $1/year is entirely unreasonable. They build a product, they sell it to you, transaction ends there. They should sell you a product that works. Bug fixes are part of making the thing you bought closer to what was advertised, so it's part of the initial purchase. An OS is not a SaaS, and nobody considered doing it until it became popular, because it's a fad.
ChrisRR 3y ago
I'm not even sure why Windows 11 exists, I can't see any real difference over Windows 10 (once I move the start menu back to the left) Hell, I don't even know what's the difference between Windows 7 and 11
- Night_Thastus 3y ago
  10 and 11 sure, but 7 and 11 have quite a few differences under the hood. WSL, the new terminal system, hardware scheduling for GPUs, direct storage, REBAR, etc.
- numpad0 3y ago
  11 was meant to be Microsoft's "Windows 10X" for a Surface brand dual-screen folding product. The product folded before launch and they decided to merge Windows 10 stable to the 10X as an outcome of their infighting around the fold.
- manicennui 3y ago
  You don't enjoy the ads?
- rwmj 3y ago
  The internal version number is still Windows 10. Edit: some references: https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/commit/824c7457489366494f0f10fd3369dc30f3a3c360 https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/commit/824c74574893...
- rez9x 3y ago
  Windows 11 has two features that I appreciate enough to hesitate going back to 10, specifically AtlasOS. The first being auto-HDR. I don’t have to manually switch my displays to HDR when I launch a 3D game with HDR support, and I don’t have to have the awful always on HDR on my desktop. The second being Windows 11 remembering window position when you disconnect and reconnect monitors. It’s great being able to take my laptop off the dock with two monitors, then bring it back and my windows go back to where they were in each display. Windows 10 just puts them all on the primary display.
- netsharc 3y ago
roschdal 3y ago
Linux
AraceliHarker 3y ago
It is said that the mentioned is not the transition of Windows 12 to a subscription, but a new SKU for Windows 11 for IoT. https://twitter.com/XenoPanther/status/1710027423981388161 https://twitter.com/XenoPanther/status/1710027423981388161
gigel82 3y ago
God damn it. I really like the Windows ecosystem I grew up in. Feel so much at home on Windows; I dislike macOS profoundly, and can barely function in a Linux UI distro (feels like I'm working with one hand tied behind my back). But there's no way I'm buying into more ads and bullshit from MS; if this comes to fruition I'll hold on to debloated Windows 10/11 for as long as I can then begrudgingly move over to the least disruptive distro of Linux I can find :(
polski-g 3y ago
It's a good thing that Valve made so much progress making games runable on Linux over the past 10 years. Imagine your plumber charging an annual fee for the copper pipes he replaced a decade ago.
stranded22 3y ago
I’m old enough to remember when windows 11 was going to be the last windows.
- lttlrck 3y ago
  If this comes to pass that might actually be true in some sense.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  You mean Windows 10 I think.
- theandrewbailey 3y ago
  I'm old enough to remember when Microsoft said Windows 10 was going to be the last version of Windows. https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-version-of-windows https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-ve...
RugnirViking 3y ago
this would be an enormous mistake unless it is radically cheaper than I know it will be. It would have to be under $5 a month to be worthwhile. The market of windows users able to afford more than that is a tiny fraction of current owners, and no a lot of them aren't even pirates they just paid for it with a pc bundle deal. See netflix usage rates in romania (2.5%), hungary (3.6%) etc as an illustrative example, these are middle income countries where I can assure you people are interested in the content but will not pay $8 a month
weatherlight 3y ago
I already dual boot windows 11 and NixOS. I only use Windows for some games on Steam, everything else I do in nix land. (My work computer is a Mac but that could be switched easily as well.) There isn't a world where I would pay a subscription for an OS, given the plethora of good and stable distros of linux (and OSX)
- DistractionRect 3y ago
  Similar story here, I take it a step further and boot windows as a guest VM with hardware passthrough w/ evdev + ddcutil as a software kvm switch. The only time I boot it baremetal is for programs that are hostile to being run in a VM. It's a good learning exercise, and the community over at /r/vfio + their discord is pretty helpful. Some madlads take it a step further and create something similar to wslg, but with the host programs overlaid over the guest desktop, https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/yrqcq4/2in1_os_with_lookingglass/ https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/yrqcq4/2in1_os_with_l...
  - karmakaze 3y ago
    I used to run Windows as a guest os with passthru access to a dedicated disk/drive and it did run great. I could even reboot natively into Windows using the same disk. I haven't done it again on my upgraded machines and instead use a dedicated Windows gaming machine. Proton should work fine for the games I play as it doesn't need any (incompatible) anti-cheat software--just haven't got around to it.
alt227 3y ago
I would guess that they are not planning on charging a monthly fee to use windows on your own hardware. If I had to guess I would say that this is related to a subscription for an online version of windows. Pay a monthly fee and get a full version of windows dekstop in a browser that you can use anywhere.
- vel0city 3y ago
  Yes. There's already leaked screenshots that kind of show what this might look like. Windows already allows for multiple desktops (Win+Tab, Win+left or right). An idea is you would have cloud desktop instances available seamlessly in the list when logged in with your Microsoft account. Or through a browser. Microsoft already has a chunk of this infrastructure in place with Xbox Cloud Gaming, which in my experiences works pretty well. I've been playing a lot of Starfield on cloud streaming on a cheap $300 Walmart laptop on WiFi, even public WiFi at places like cafes and tethered on my phone.
ewzimm 3y ago
Windows is already a subscription OS, usually for businesses. Subscription licenses are included with higher Microsoft 365 tiers. It's just one of the many ways that it's sold. This doesn't indicate that the perpetual licenses are going away, but it seems logical that they would package certain services in a subscription tier like bundling Microsoft 365 with Copilot and other future features.
- lttlrck 3y ago
  Yes this might be: Windows is included with an Office 365 sub.
- trelane 3y ago
  This is something I don't get; don't the computers businesses buy already come with a Windows license?
  - warrenm 3y ago
    only if you're an SMB enterprise rigs normally come blank, and get imaged in-house from corporate standard image masters (and against corporate licensing)
JohnFen 3y ago
Is this a surprise? Microsoft has been saying that this was their roadmap.
ReptileMan 3y ago
are there any games that doesn't run well on linux? Asking for a friend.
focusedone 3y ago
This is my surprised face. I am surprised by this. /s
warrenm 3y ago
if so, it makes perfect sense - pretty much all enterprise OSes arev "subscription-based" in some form
cptskippy 3y ago
I don't see Microsoft making Windows 12 subscription only, just as they haven't made Office subscription only.
maeil 3y ago
This would mean they're ready to all but abandon the consumer market and become a pure business OS.
nunez 3y ago
You will own nothing...
- warrenm 3y ago
  You already don't "own" software You own a license to use software
CodeCompost 3y ago
That's what people have been saying about Windows for quite a while now. Nothing new here.
- TheRealPomax 3y ago
  Except the part where Windows used to be installed on a machine and that was the end of that. Then Win10 encourages you to use a Microsoft account "for syncing". Then Win11 insisted you use a Microsoft account, making it close-enough-to-impossible for regular users to still use a local account at all. So there's nothing new here, because MS already started down this path years ago, we're just commented midway through. If they'd gone cloud at Win8, no one would have gone for it. At Win12, after this gradual descent into "listen to my voice, you don't even want a local account, you can't even remember why you ever wanted one in the first place, this is so much less of a hassle", it'd be a fairly easy sell to the masses. Throw in an yearly subscription plan that buys your company permission to run windows server, where your hardware can act as access point, syncing with MS's infrastructure, but isn't the primary data host, and that sure sounds like something Microsoft would absolutely love to be in charge of.
Medox 3y ago
Source site seems to be down. Windows Central has some clarifications: > Now, references to a subscription model were found in the latest Windows preview builds, suggesting that Microsoft is finally going to force users to pay a monthly subscription to use Windows, right? No. These references are almost definitely tied to the newly discovered "IoT Enterprise Subscription" edition of Windows 11, not the client version of Windows vNext. https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/no-of-course-windows-12-wont-require-a-subscription-to-use https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/no-o...
drofmij 3y ago
Wasn't windows 10 supposed to be the "last windows ever" ? Have been hearing about the subscription windows for 20+ years and it hasn't happened yet.
- orphea 3y ago
  > Wasn't windows 10 supposed to be the "last windows ever" Microsoft has never said that. Edit: since people are still confused. 1. What was said was "...and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10". This was said by a Microsoft developer evangelist, never it was an official corporate position or an announcement. And most certainly no one said "ever". 2. You could argue "the last version" meant "the most recent". 3. When Microsoft has been reached for a comment, they produced a usual corporate speech about how Windows 10 is going to be "reflective of the way Windows will be delivered as a service" (whatever this means) but they never confirmed there won't be the next version.
  - callwhendone 3y ago
    https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-version-of-windows https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-ve...
    - vel0city 3y ago
      Your article largely agrees with the parent comment. A developer evangelist mentioned it once, Microsoft didn't immediately deny it, loads of people made assumptions of what that meant. Your article even mentions 11 and 12 were still a possibility. And to an extent the basic idea they did agree to has been true. 11 was a free upgrade for machines that were eligible to run it. I didn't need to go out and purchase a new Windows version.
  - doctorwho42 3y ago
    I had both friends and family working in Microsoft when Windows 10 was released, and it definitely was sold as the last OS that would just get free updates forever. And that they would run it as a loss-leader.
rcoveson 3y ago
This is ridiculous. Of course Windows 12 won't require a subscription. It will only be required if you want to disable the native data collection and advertising.
- blibble 3y ago
  > It will only be required if you want to disable the native data collection and advertising. maybe to begin with then the ads and the tracking appear later anyway
  - ixwt 3y ago
    Yes, after each update.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  No, sorry, that will be the premium tier above the paid basic ad subsidized tier. Today they only offer the basic ad subsidized tier with a subscription period of their support window.
- itsrobforreal 3y ago
  There will never be any price you can pay MS to give up telemetry and tracking
  - hilbert42 3y ago
    I'm surprised some enterprising hackers haven't hacked the binaries to nuke telemetry permanently (one used to see lots of Win hacks in the past). But then, perhaps I've not been looking hard enough (I mostly use Penguin).
    - Aeolun 3y ago
      I think some enterprising hackers have long ago switched to a less hostile OS.
bentt 3y ago
I don't know if you guys have heard but there's this other operating system Linux and
- theiwahejdn 3y ago
  [dead]
- mekster 3y ago
  That does not have the same catalog of games as Windows, that does not have the same catalog of useful third party apps as Mac, that does not have the ease of maintenance as Windows and Mac... I heard there will be the year of Linux desktop since maybe 15 years but there's a reason that hasn't happened.
tibbydudeza 3y ago
I would not mind a family pack - already paying for Office 365 - R1,400 ($71) a year for 5 computers. Includes 1TB cloud storage - cheaper than copy of Starfield.
aeurielesn 3y ago
Still stuck with using Windows to be able to play any latest AAA game.
- callwhendone 3y ago
  That's the only reason I ever log into Windows. Such an atrocious OS.
  - deprecative 3y ago
    Not to be that guy but Windows is the best OS out right now with all its faults. I don't have to dick around with Linux, and my USB ports don't crap the bed every two seconds and I can actually manage my windows unlike with MacOS. That it plays games is just a bonus.
    - nrr 3y ago
      Why are windows hard to manage under macOS?
      - jorts 3y ago
        It just requires an app on Mac versus windows key + arrow to move windows around. It's a non-issue.
        deprecative 3y ago
        Requiring an app is a blocking issue.
        nrr 3y ago
        I usually get away just fine with Control+Command+f to fullscreen the window, and Control+Up will open up Mission Control so that I can get two fullscreened windows side-by-side. It's all built into macOS. Windows 11 adds snap layouts, for which there is currently no analog, but this will let you do the side-by-side thing from earlier versions of Windows as long as you can tolerate the fullscreened windows becoming their own Space. (I actually find this preferable myself, but YMMV.)
issafram 3y ago
Adoption rate will be very small
Guvante 3y ago
Microsoft has charged a subscription to enterprise for Windows for a long time now. Finding information about subscriptions is unsurprising.
CommieBobDole 3y ago
As someone who is both a heavy Office user and who plays AAA games, I pretty much have to use Windows at least some of the time, which I'm OK with; it works and I'm used to it. And I would be perfectly OK to pay money to get a work-focused OS that doesn't have any of the Windows monetization tricks where it tries to harvest my data or bombard me with ads, so this sounds promising on the surface. But then I realize that I already pay for a work-focused OS, because Windows wasn't free - I bought a (somewhat expensive) copy of Windows 10 Professional when I built my current machine, and they still try to do all of that crap. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you have to buy Windows 12, then pay a monthly fee to keep using it, then get bombarded with ads and all your activity tracked and then sold to third parties.
- henriquez 3y ago
  Maybe they will do it like Hulu where you can pay an additional monthly fee to get ad-free access and then you’ll get ads anyway because [reasons]
haolez 3y ago
On a side note, in a universe where ReactOS[0] had comprehensive drivers support, would it be a better alternative to modern Windows? Or would desktop Linux? That's a fun thought exercize, at least for me :) [0] https://reactos.org/ https://reactos.org/
- hilbert42 3y ago
  I mostly use Linux but still have some Win-7 PCs and I'll never upgrade them. That said, I've tried ReactOS over the years but it's hardly even in alpha it's so incomplete. If it were usable I'd certainly use it. In my mind ReactOS conjures images of building the pyramids with a team of three—completion date estimate sometime between forever and eternity. Never has there ever been a software project that's been so long in gestation and still going nowhere. Unfortunately, I've given up on ReactOS but what I'd really love to know is why it's taken so long. Given the long saga of Windows and of MS's abuse of its users—many of whom are annoyed and disgruntled because they've little or no option but to continue to use Windows—then you'd think there'd be an almighty rush to develop a Windows clone. But no, there's stuff-all interest and it's always been so. I'd go as far to say the failure of ReactOS is one of the strangest and most curious events to occur in software history. One perhaps can understand why ReactOS was never developed in the US or even any Western country but why hasn't say Russia or China or other ex-Eastern Bloc countries thrown money into its development (seeing that much of its development already comes from that part of the world)? You'd reckon there'd even be both a strategic and financial advantage for these countries (as there was during the Cold War when they threw huge sums into developing an alternative source of tech).
0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
Valve investing in SteamOS and Proton looks really prescient. It took years, but the investment has really paid off (for me, not sure Valve). Games is/was my only need for Windows and I finally ditched my Windows machine last year. I have had to give up on playing some incompatible titles, but there is still a wealth of options available.
- phone8675309 3y ago
  It's wild how much this has changed. When I started college in the early 2000s my one and only computer dual booted so I could run games and Windows-only university software on the Windows side and everything else under Linux. In the middle of college, I went full Linux with Wine for some games but moved the rest of my gaming to console. After college, I went back to dual booting because PC gaming was the more economical choice and I had bills to pay. Then I went back to full Linux with Wine for a number of years because I didn't have a lot of time to play anyway and keeping Windows running was a pain. After I made the jump to full time employee from contractor I went two machines - a Linux machine for everything but gaming and a gaming machine for gaming, moving the gaming machine to the every day driver for a couple of newly built gaming rigs. Now I'm full time Linux with Proton for most games and a single GPU-passthrough for anything that doesn't run on that. I could probably spend my entire time gaming and never touch a title that doesn't run under Proton and still have plenty of things to play with my friends and plenty of new releases to try. It is amazing how much a company run by former Microsoft employees has dumped into never having to deal with Windows again. It's been good for their bottom line too. You love to see it.
marcodiego 3y ago
They tried that in Brazil in 2006. Google for "computador pré-pago" to find out (in Portuguese) how it was intended to work.
cjbgkagh 3y ago
I have a bottle of champagne put aside for when I can finally quit windows. I’m actively porting my software stack and dependencies to cross platform so it’ll be pretty soon. They’ve clearly taken their monopoly position for granted and now there is serious inertia behind getting rid of them. I’m actually responding to customer demand for cross platform so the customers are clearly hating windows as well. The thing about ads is that quite often whatever you will pay to remove it, someone will pay more to put it back. Paying to remove ads is a signal that you’re the exact kind of person they want to send ads to. So not having ads has to both be either a moral position instead or a long term sustainability position. Microsoft expect their monopoly status to sustain them and have been ratcheting up their abuse of their monopoly to extract more money. In my view they’re on track to losing that privilege. Just recently YouTube has started blocking videos due to add blocker presence. I already pay producers via patreon and I guess I will just go watch over there. YouTube is a bad habit I need to break and their new policy will help me do that. Oh, and while I’m shitting in windows; the defender has made file access almost unusably slow, and I get intermittent stuttering both in games and with music on an absolute overkill of a computer speced this way precisely because it needs to run windows.
- adolph 3y ago
  > I have a bottle of champagne put aside for when I can finally quit windows. This is an odd incentive. One might consider it as a reason for using Windows as long as possible, since the bottle would be of a mature vintage and worth more? It's kind of like the furniture store that refunds people's mattress purchases if the baseball team wins. Given the advantage of not making people's purchase free retroactively, the promotion is kind of like betting against the team even though it is proclaimed as if it is in support of the team.
  - cjbgkagh 3y ago
    If age was a consideration I would have bought an older bottle. I'm not a connoisseur, or even a lush. It's a large bottle so that I can share it with my friends, I'm the last windows holdout so they're waiting on me. My windows experience isn't even that bad as I disable most of the crap they try to foist upon me. It's the forced breaking upgrades that have caused the most personal grief. Apart from that it really is about responding to customer demand. I'd like to buy an apple laptop and hopefully by then there is a really good linux experience. I'd hate to go from Windows anti-consumerism to Apple anti-consumerism but it's hard to get good laptop hardware.
adolph 3y ago
If MS bundled in some hardware it would be similar to the iPhone Upgrade Program where one pays monthly and gets new hardware every year (which is bundled with the OS). How much of the consumer's payment hardware and how much OS/software? The consumer is just paying for value provided by peace of mind that they have something that works. (This is a hypo on my part as my personal value is to keep using the same phone until the OS is too far out of date.) https://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program https://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program
smallstepforman 3y ago
Most people will pay for it, I’m suprised it took MS that long to realise it. I love Haiku, use Linux professionally, also have a MacBook Pro, but lets face it, all the best software works best on Windows.
devwastaken 3y ago
Perfect time to buy a MacBook.
stuartjohnson12 3y ago
please don't
pietervdvn 3y ago
TL;DR: The canary channel of Windows contains some references which hint that Windows will become a subscription instead of an upfront sale.
- _8j50 3y ago
  More likely, if you choose to signin with a windows/live/entra id, your subscription activates it, else you out in a code. It would be utter incompetence when macos is a thing to not frog-boil consumers. It might be sunscription only, but probably not right away.
cultofmetatron 3y ago
I guess this canary found some Compulsory mOnotization
mekster 3y ago
There can't be a subscription based Windows. People refuse to pay (intentionally or financially) and they won't receive security updates on older OS and see how the world unfolds. It's already a mess that people are using so many different Windows versions and MS took the effort to beg users to upgrade. They will be unwinding that effort altogether not to mention bug the developers to support so many different OS versions. Apple has always been right that they release OS upgrades freely and see how much saner it is.
bioneuralnet 3y ago
How did we all get stuck in the worst possible [tech] timeline?
- cyanydeez 3y ago
  Capitalism
- somat 3y ago
  I am not sure about that. Somehow we ended up in a time line where there is this great mainstream full stack os where not only do you get the full source code you also are allowed to use and distribute it with very few restrictions. All of which is based on the critical generosity of a few key individuals. It is easy to imagine a history where this did not happen at all. The coolest thing is, say you are a snob like me, "Ah yes, your source code based os project is very nice and all but it's inclusiveness has made it far to big and messy for my small hipster mind" there are multiple source code based operating systems to choose from! Really it is pretty great.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  This isn’t quite the worst. The worst never had globally free GPS or the Internet. It was all always totally private orgs with subscription services.
  - leoqa 3y ago
    AOL in 2023
- justinclift 3y ago
  Learned sociopathy in decision making ranks. aka MBAs
john_the_writer 3y ago
I think if they did this manufacturers would get sued. You have to have windows on some computers. They're locked in. If you further have to pay, this might brick the device, and that I think would mean violating your rights of ownership.
- donor20 3y ago
  Huh? When you buy or install windows 12 they will ask you to agree to the subscription terms. You don’t own windows even now in most cases
k12sosse 3y ago
Alternate title: how Microsoft handed Linux the keys to desktop dominance I wonder if Windows will be included with GamePass™
- linguae 3y ago
  Windows has long had its detractors, yet during every upcoming Windows release when some controversial change causes some people to exclaim that this will finally be the year of the Linux desktop, most Windows users end up grinning and bearing it, and thus the year of the Linux desktop gets pushed back for the umpteenth time. Even if Microsoft charges subscription fees for Windows 12, I predict that people will either grin and bear it, or they will stick to Windows 11 for as long as they can. If enough people don’t upgrade to Windows 12, Microsoft might relent, like how Windows 8.1 brought back the smart menu and how later releases of Windows 10 addressed some criticism of earlier releases. But given previous patterns, I don’t expect a mass exodus to Linux.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    It certainly pushed people towards MacOS and Linux. Office usage has also been decimated by Google docs and similar. Early education is largely on Chromebooks. Mass exodus to Linux won't happen, but W11 may become the next XP that people won't upgrade from for decades. And then the price of hardware+subscription will be compared to buying an otherwise overpriced Mac...
  - archerx 3y ago
    I have been using windows since version 3.11, I will never pay a subscription for windows, will not install windows 11 and will not install windows 12. I have been a die hard windows user/fan for decades but windows is dying, the corpse is starting to stink. My future will probably have less microsoft and more Linux and MacOS once windows 10 is no longer usable.
jackvalentine 3y ago
Accepting that “charge a large amount of money up front for the OS” is a dead end business model I’d be okay with this if they stripped all the user hostile and adware crap back. They won’t.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Tiered subscriptions, with some kind of premium tier having only 1/2 the crapware and ads?
  - squigz 3y ago
    Do you actually think that's a sane option?
    - justinclift 3y ago
      Who knows what MS considers sane though... ;)
navjack27 3y ago
We currently have two main versions of Windows 11 - Home and Professional, which cost a set price and include free updates for the lifetime of the operating system. I don't know about you but I personally paid for windows pro for workstations.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  Windows 11 Enterprise here. For home use.
bsder 3y ago
Oh please oh please oh please oh please. Rolling this out would be a business disaster studied for decades. I've know enough people already honked off about all the gorp in Windows 11 that many of them are refusing to move from Windows 10. This would be the icing on the cake to finally get them broken free from Windows as an OS. This, sadly, won't break the hegemony of Office 365, though.
grotorea 3y ago
Half-devil advocating here, but is this the end of the world? Right now, we have software that we expect that keeps being updated, but the company gets a one time payment. With a subscription, things get more stable financially and the company can adjust the budget accordingly. It also incentivized keeping Windows good and working so those subscriptions don't get cancelled.
- lotsoweiners 3y ago
  Windows is free when I buy a PC. If I need to pay additional money to keep the OS running then I may as well save some money in the first place and just use Linux.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    I hear System76 has some decent machines that don't have to stomach the cost of a Windows license. I believe Dell also offers a variant of the Dell XPS that is cheaper for having Linux?
    - justinclift 3y ago
      Framework laptops too: https://frame.work https://frame.work The have the OS choice (Windows Home, Pro, or "No OS") with the price listed for each. "No OS" is $0, the windows ones aren't.
      - LoganDark 3y ago
        My main complaint against them used to be the lack of GPU. But now, if I ever have a next laptop, it very well could be a Framework 16.
        justinclift 3y ago
        16 not 15?
vincent-manis 3y ago
I fully defend Microsoft's right to do this (whether they actually will do it is as yet unknown), but it in no way benefits users. There is competition in the OS area, and a few people will gravitate to Linux; more might go to ChromeOS or MacOS. The subscription rate will have to be set so that it's not more expensive over say 3 years to buy a PC with Windows than it is to buy a comparable Mac (if they don't do that, they will be handing Apple a massive tool to increase sales). I think Chromebooks might do well in that environment, especially for naïve users (though they have their uses even for advanced users; I like my Chromebooks and their Linux VMs). You buy the machine, plug it in, and it fires up almost immediately; and your machine has software support now for 10 years at no cost (if you trust Google to deliver on that). I suspect that many canny purchasers will compare Microsoft's subscription cost to Google's ($0), and decide accordingly. My guess (and my track record is clear, in 1976 I predicted that Apple would be bankrupt within a year) is that Microsoft will offer a combined Windows/Office365 subscription, and a barebones “free” Windows that nags the user to “upgrade”.
- toofy 3y ago
  > The subscription rate will have to be set so that it’s not more expensive over say 3 years to buy a PC with Windows and than it is to buy a comparable Mac… i agree with your overall point. tho for me, i suspect the price would need to be significantly less than than that (PC price included.) my main driver is linux, but im on windows for probably 40% of work stuff. however, i have incredible subscription fatigue. its to the point now that i forego products regularly if i cant just buy it outright. i’ll happily even pay more than i would over time just to 1) not have to manage and deal with the constant little pin pricks of soooo many subscriptions, and 2) to feel like i own the thing. if windows goes subscription, i will almost certainly just move to mac for the things i cant do with linux and if my read of others is correct, i suspect many many others would do the same.
- xg15 3y ago
  I think the strongest competition is actually other Windows versions: People are usually fine with the Windows version they know and use - Microsoft already had to drag it's users kicking and screaming to update from XP to 7, then later from 8 to 10. I feel they'd have to up that kind of pressure by a lot to get people to switch not just to a new version, but now even one that requires a subscription. So if this ever becomes reality, I expect a massive campaign of FUD, dark patterns and deliberate incompatibility to get people to leave the old versions.
jiggawatts 3y ago
Vaguely similar to the notion of an “alive” business and a “dead” one, I look at any application or website with a community in the same light: the second that some suit-wearing MBA is allowed to alienate the power users, the contributors, the developers, or the equivalent, it’s downhill into inevitable doom from there. Sure, the bulk of the user pyramid might be retained — for a while — but the peak is where the action was. Like the growing shoot at the end of a branch, that’s where new applications are written, new content is produced, and new markets are created. The rest just consumes, uses, and follows. Microsoft is insisting on driving away their most important but least numerous users as hard and as fast as they possibly can. No metrics will show the consequences of these decisions, and no one will be punished for tragically abusing the commons. I tiny vocal minority is lost, sure, but who cares? They were troublemakers and hard to market to! Good riddance. The uptake of the each new Windows version is slower and slower than the one before. The excitement and innovation has been replaced by telemetry and built in crapware. People stood in line to buy a copy of Windows 95. Hardly anyone will install Windows 12 on purpose.
- xg15 3y ago
  > Sure, the bulk of the user pyramid might be retained — for a while — but the peak is where the action was. Like the growing shoot at the end of a branch, that’s where new applications are written, new content is produced, and new markets are created. The rest just consumes, uses, and follows. And the suit-wearing MBA will probably say "yup, that's fine, it's harvest time!"
elforce002 3y ago
Interesting. I bought a Mac this year and I don't think I'll be coming back to windows and if this is their endgame, PC makers will go a different route too.
0dayz 3y ago
Honestly, I would be fine with Microsoft having a subscription IF they made Windows executable interoperable with Linux. If I have to pay a tax to make software for Windows work flawlessly on Linux, I would take it (I already donate to Wine).

61 points by el_hacker 3y ago

And people will continue pirating

If Microsoft does, I am not using Windows 12, I am going to Ubuntu. I won't even pirate it. I refuse to pay a subscription for an OS, that should be pay once and be done paying.

donkeybeer 3y ago
I'd advise Debian over Ubuntu because Ubuntu is lately also similar forced bs by forcing snaps.
Simulacra 3y ago
I refuse to use windows 11, there's no positive reason for updating from windows 10. I'm with you.
pjmlp 3y ago
Better chose another distro, https://ubuntu.com/pro/subscribe https://ubuntu.com/pro/subscribe
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  The presence of a paid version doesn't negate the free version.
- selfhoster11 3y ago
  You can't be serious. This is a subscription of an entirely different kind, and most certainly will not be too useful for most people. So long you run an LTS release, you get a stable target that will remain stable and supported by security updates for 5 years. For free.
ianceicys 3y ago
You are already paying a subscription for an OS. How old is your computer, 4 years-5 years old? Take $200 (cost of OS) and it's $40 or $50 a year or $3-4 dollars a month. Same applies for Apple Mac OS you just pay the $200 in the price of the $2,000 computure.
- itishappy 3y ago
  That's not a subscription, that's amortization. The critical difference is that amortization decreases your cost per unit time with use. More use, better value. Subscriptions do not work that way. Having to pay $50/year for a 5 year old laptop doesn't excite.
  - cptskippy 3y ago
    That's an oversimplification because it requires the utility of the device to be maintained over it's operational life. Routinely the utility of the device changes as new features are added or removed during OS upgrades, support for software, and eventually hardware support is dropped entirely. It doesn't matter if the hardware is still functional. This isn't even necessarily in the vendor's control. For example, Google Chrome just stopped loading TLS encrypted sites on my partner's MacBook this past week and displays a lovely pink banner over every tab saying the OS is no longer supported. Companies are not held to any standards for support and the amount of support they give varies based on the product. Apple has provided decades of support for some products but considerably less for others because they shared an architecture or platform that was eventually dropped. Google is notorious for just dropped support for products on a whim. And subscriptions won't fix this problem.
  - ianceicys 3y ago
    The problem with Amortization in the consumer space is the lifetime of the device. Sure, you can keep running a computer for year 6 instead of the standard 5 years...but 90% of consumers don't - What machines from 2016 are you using today? If you do, let's get serious you're already looking to upgrade in the near future, no?
    - 3y ago
3seashells 3y ago
What Linux needs is a easier cross over layer.. Less loke dual boot and more vm alt tab into and out..
- trelane 3y ago
  Microsoft could create this. They have no reason to. Nobody else could, because it would require Microsoft to agree to something that's against their interests.
  - rakoo 3y ago
    Isn't that WSL though ?
    - trelane 3y ago
      no, it's reverse WSL. LSW, if you will.
rakoo 3y ago
The problem is, in a capitalist world even libre/open source needs money to live. A race to thr cheapest is a loss for everyone in that kind of society. No OS is ever "done", there is always maintenance, security updates, ...
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I don't think that he was talking about not paying for software. I think he was talking about not renting software.
  - rakoo 3y ago
    Yes but what is the right price for a one-time payment of software ? If you're going to use maintenance, updates, all the work that comes after you paid, what do you consider is a correct price to pay in advance for all future changes ?
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      The "correct price" depends entirely on the specific software, so this is an impossible question to answer in its literal sense. > what do you consider is a correct price to pay in advance for all future changes ? You don't. Outside of security updates, which should never be charged for, you pay for the software as it exists when you buy it. When future changes come around, you buy the upgrade (if you want it). It's the tried-and-true method of charging for this stuff.
      - rakoo 3y ago
        We're specifically talking about an OS here, so the scope is not really the same, but still: are you ok with no package updates ? No update to the documentation, the wiki, and stuff like that ? No forum or chat ?
      - warrenm 3y ago
        >Outside of security updates, which should never be charged for Why shouldn't you be charged for for security updates?
warrenm 3y ago
>I refuse to pay a subscription for an OS, that should be pay once and be done paying. Sure But don't expect to get any updates to what you paid for - after all, updates are no longer the same OS
mekster 3y ago
There's a decent OS called MacOS that's somehow always free on major new releases...
- orionblastar 3y ago
  It is bundled with hardware. I cannot afford it, I would rather go with Linux in my humble opinion.

Workaccount2 3y ago

I've wondered why microsoft hasn't done this already. The $oftware boys already have a full explainer about why $aa$ is the best thing since open source, so why shouldn't Microsoft jump on board too? C'mon SaaS devs, tell me again about value add and how you love paying monthly for the software you use...

pjmlp 3y ago
The alternative is that everyone thinks they can code an alternative during a weekend.
- horsawlarway 3y ago
  Nah - the alternative is choosing software that is stable and open. Not some crazy "not made in house - gonna code it myself" crap... that seems like some weird personal thing. Approach software as a set of tools, with the expectation that you must learn and master its use, but then you will be functional and productive for a long time. That's what stand-alone installers or self-hosted alternatives are. They require more learning, but they don't sell you out, close down, jack up the price, or turn off features because it's "not generating new users". They also don't randomly rework the UI nearly as often because "if it's not shiny we can't sell it". But they do require more work and learning up front. For me, at least... that tradeoff is a clear and easy win. --- Good software is like good woodworking tools - hard to master, but very productive once you're there. SaaS is always the opposite: Super easy to start, incredibly frustrating to be a power user. Saas doesn't want power users - it wants more subscriptions.
  - libraryatnight 3y ago
    I agree. Stallman said something like when you don't control the tools you use to do work you don't control your life. It's true.
  - oblio 3y ago
    > Approach software as a set of tools, with the expectation that you must learn and master its use, but then you will be functional and productive for a long time. This does not scale to end users.

Simulacra 3y ago

I still haven't seen one good reason to upgrade from windows 10.

NullPrefix 3y ago
What made you leave windows 7?
- rcoveson 3y ago
  Windows 9 was the only one worth using.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    That would be 2000 or NT (I always confuse those two for some reason...).
    - guraf 3y ago
      I'm sure you're making a clever joke and I'm just not getting it. All Windows branded as NT as well as 2000 (the first NT not branded as such) predate Windows 8 by over a decade, so I don't understand why you'd think one of them would be number 9.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        Ah, my bad... I mean the last one worth using wasn't 9, but either 2000 or NT, which for the love of god always confuse nowadays despite having used both back the day... I think my preferred one of all time was 2000, but again not sure if actually was NT... I'm getting old... Edit: Just realized GPs joke... There never was a Windows 9... And it isn't even that late...
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        NT version numbers were weird, and major releases didn5 increment major version numbers, but if you the first major release (NT 3.1) as the next major windows version after Windows 3.x, (so as 4) you would get to 9 about Windows 2000 (this counts 3.51 as a major release.) Of course, that would leave out the consumer line starting with Win 95.

horsawlarway 3y ago

I am willing to believe that MS might try a subscription model, but this doesn't look like particularly strong evidence for it. Those strings could be anything - For all we know, it's just tracking office 365 subscription status/enterprise enrollment, or tracking windows account notification subscriptions, or any of a hundred other valid reasons. Those terms are just too generic to be particularly meaningful.

aNoob7000 3y ago

I think they will offer two options, advertising or advanced features. The advertising option speaks for itself. The will put ads in different parts of the O/S. Kiss goodbye to any privacy you thought you had. The features option will make more O/S options like photo and video editing apps a subscription type model. Pay $10 a year and get the advanced features. Either way, I think this should help Apple and open source operating systems.

JohnClark1337 3y ago
[dead]
alanfranz 3y ago
Usd 10/year is entirely reasonable. But I fear an higher fee.
- fluoridation 3y ago
  If your average user buys a new version every 5 years and the Pro version costs $250, they could charge $50/yr. $10/yr would be quite generous, unless they think they can get lots of people to stop pirating the OS. $10/month seems like an unlikely price point.
  - kyriakos 3y ago
    I honestly don't understand why anyone would pirate windows. Its full featured if you don't activate apart from a watermark. If you choose to activate you can get an oem key for like 10 usd.
- seanw444 3y ago
  $1/year is entirely unreasonable. They build a product, they sell it to you, transaction ends there. They should sell you a product that works. Bug fixes are part of making the thing you bought closer to what was advertised, so it's part of the initial purchase. An OS is not a SaaS, and nobody considered doing it until it became popular, because it's a fad.

ChrisRR 3y ago

I'm not even sure why Windows 11 exists, I can't see any real difference over Windows 10 (once I move the start menu back to the left) Hell, I don't even know what's the difference between Windows 7 and 11

Night_Thastus 3y ago
10 and 11 sure, but 7 and 11 have quite a few differences under the hood. WSL, the new terminal system, hardware scheduling for GPUs, direct storage, REBAR, etc.
numpad0 3y ago
11 was meant to be Microsoft's "Windows 10X" for a Surface brand dual-screen folding product. The product folded before launch and they decided to merge Windows 10 stable to the 10X as an outcome of their infighting around the fold.
manicennui 3y ago
You don't enjoy the ads?
rwmj 3y ago
The internal version number is still Windows 10. Edit: some references: https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/commit/824c7457489366494f0f10fd3369dc30f3a3c360 https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/commit/824c74574893...
rez9x 3y ago
Windows 11 has two features that I appreciate enough to hesitate going back to 10, specifically AtlasOS. The first being auto-HDR. I don’t have to manually switch my displays to HDR when I launch a 3D game with HDR support, and I don’t have to have the awful always on HDR on my desktop. The second being Windows 11 remembering window position when you disconnect and reconnect monitors. It’s great being able to take my laptop off the dock with two monitors, then bring it back and my windows go back to where they were in each display. Windows 10 just puts them all on the primary display.
netsharc 3y ago

roschdal 3y ago

Linux

AraceliHarker 3y ago

It is said that the mentioned is not the transition of Windows 12 to a subscription, but a new SKU for Windows 11 for IoT. https://twitter.com/XenoPanther/status/1710027423981388161 https://twitter.com/XenoPanther/status/1710027423981388161

gigel82 3y ago

God damn it. I really like the Windows ecosystem I grew up in. Feel so much at home on Windows; I dislike macOS profoundly, and can barely function in a Linux UI distro (feels like I'm working with one hand tied behind my back). But there's no way I'm buying into more ads and bullshit from MS; if this comes to fruition I'll hold on to debloated Windows 10/11 for as long as I can then begrudgingly move over to the least disruptive distro of Linux I can find :(

polski-g 3y ago

It's a good thing that Valve made so much progress making games runable on Linux over the past 10 years. Imagine your plumber charging an annual fee for the copper pipes he replaced a decade ago.

stranded22 3y ago

I’m old enough to remember when windows 11 was going to be the last windows.

lttlrck 3y ago
If this comes to pass that might actually be true in some sense.
tsimionescu 3y ago
You mean Windows 10 I think.
theandrewbailey 3y ago
I'm old enough to remember when Microsoft said Windows 10 was going to be the last version of Windows. https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-version-of-windows https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-ve...

RugnirViking 3y ago

this would be an enormous mistake unless it is radically cheaper than I know it will be. It would have to be under $5 a month to be worthwhile. The market of windows users able to afford more than that is a tiny fraction of current owners, and no a lot of them aren't even pirates they just paid for it with a pc bundle deal. See netflix usage rates in romania (2.5%), hungary (3.6%) etc as an illustrative example, these are middle income countries where I can assure you people are interested in the content but will not pay $8 a month

weatherlight 3y ago

I already dual boot windows 11 and NixOS. I only use Windows for some games on Steam, everything else I do in nix land. (My work computer is a Mac but that could be switched easily as well.) There isn't a world where I would pay a subscription for an OS, given the plethora of good and stable distros of linux (and OSX)

DistractionRect 3y ago
Similar story here, I take it a step further and boot windows as a guest VM with hardware passthrough w/ evdev + ddcutil as a software kvm switch. The only time I boot it baremetal is for programs that are hostile to being run in a VM. It's a good learning exercise, and the community over at /r/vfio + their discord is pretty helpful. Some madlads take it a step further and create something similar to wslg, but with the host programs overlaid over the guest desktop, https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/yrqcq4/2in1_os_with_lookingglass/ https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/yrqcq4/2in1_os_with_l...
- karmakaze 3y ago
  I used to run Windows as a guest os with passthru access to a dedicated disk/drive and it did run great. I could even reboot natively into Windows using the same disk. I haven't done it again on my upgraded machines and instead use a dedicated Windows gaming machine. Proton should work fine for the games I play as it doesn't need any (incompatible) anti-cheat software--just haven't got around to it.

alt227 3y ago

I would guess that they are not planning on charging a monthly fee to use windows on your own hardware. If I had to guess I would say that this is related to a subscription for an online version of windows. Pay a monthly fee and get a full version of windows dekstop in a browser that you can use anywhere.

vel0city 3y ago
Yes. There's already leaked screenshots that kind of show what this might look like. Windows already allows for multiple desktops (Win+Tab, Win+left or right). An idea is you would have cloud desktop instances available seamlessly in the list when logged in with your Microsoft account. Or through a browser. Microsoft already has a chunk of this infrastructure in place with Xbox Cloud Gaming, which in my experiences works pretty well. I've been playing a lot of Starfield on cloud streaming on a cheap $300 Walmart laptop on WiFi, even public WiFi at places like cafes and tethered on my phone.

ewzimm 3y ago

Windows is already a subscription OS, usually for businesses. Subscription licenses are included with higher Microsoft 365 tiers. It's just one of the many ways that it's sold. This doesn't indicate that the perpetual licenses are going away, but it seems logical that they would package certain services in a subscription tier like bundling Microsoft 365 with Copilot and other future features.

lttlrck 3y ago
Yes this might be: Windows is included with an Office 365 sub.
trelane 3y ago
This is something I don't get; don't the computers businesses buy already come with a Windows license?
- warrenm 3y ago
  only if you're an SMB enterprise rigs normally come blank, and get imaged in-house from corporate standard image masters (and against corporate licensing)

JohnFen 3y ago

Is this a surprise? Microsoft has been saying that this was their roadmap.

ReptileMan 3y ago

are there any games that doesn't run well on linux? Asking for a friend.

focusedone 3y ago

This is my surprised face. I am surprised by this. /s

warrenm 3y ago

if so, it makes perfect sense - pretty much all enterprise OSes arev "subscription-based" in some form

cptskippy 3y ago

I don't see Microsoft making Windows 12 subscription only, just as they haven't made Office subscription only.

maeil 3y ago

This would mean they're ready to all but abandon the consumer market and become a pure business OS.

nunez 3y ago

You will own nothing...

warrenm 3y ago
You already don't "own" software You own a license to use software

CodeCompost 3y ago

That's what people have been saying about Windows for quite a while now. Nothing new here.

TheRealPomax 3y ago
Except the part where Windows used to be installed on a machine and that was the end of that. Then Win10 encourages you to use a Microsoft account "for syncing". Then Win11 insisted you use a Microsoft account, making it close-enough-to-impossible for regular users to still use a local account at all. So there's nothing new here, because MS already started down this path years ago, we're just commented midway through. If they'd gone cloud at Win8, no one would have gone for it. At Win12, after this gradual descent into "listen to my voice, you don't even want a local account, you can't even remember why you ever wanted one in the first place, this is so much less of a hassle", it'd be a fairly easy sell to the masses. Throw in an yearly subscription plan that buys your company permission to run windows server, where your hardware can act as access point, syncing with MS's infrastructure, but isn't the primary data host, and that sure sounds like something Microsoft would absolutely love to be in charge of.

Medox 3y ago

Source site seems to be down. Windows Central has some clarifications: > Now, references to a subscription model were found in the latest Windows preview builds, suggesting that Microsoft is finally going to force users to pay a monthly subscription to use Windows, right? No. These references are almost definitely tied to the newly discovered "IoT Enterprise Subscription" edition of Windows 11, not the client version of Windows vNext. https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/no-of-course-windows-12-wont-require-a-subscription-to-use https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/no-o...

drofmij 3y ago

Wasn't windows 10 supposed to be the "last windows ever" ? Have been hearing about the subscription windows for 20+ years and it hasn't happened yet.

orphea 3y ago
> Wasn't windows 10 supposed to be the "last windows ever" Microsoft has never said that. Edit: since people are still confused. 1. What was said was "...and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10". This was said by a Microsoft developer evangelist, never it was an official corporate position or an announcement. And most certainly no one said "ever". 2. You could argue "the last version" meant "the most recent". 3. When Microsoft has been reached for a comment, they produced a usual corporate speech about how Windows 10 is going to be "reflective of the way Windows will be delivered as a service" (whatever this means) but they never confirmed there won't be the next version.
- callwhendone 3y ago
  https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-version-of-windows https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-ve...
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Your article largely agrees with the parent comment. A developer evangelist mentioned it once, Microsoft didn't immediately deny it, loads of people made assumptions of what that meant. Your article even mentions 11 and 12 were still a possibility. And to an extent the basic idea they did agree to has been true. 11 was a free upgrade for machines that were eligible to run it. I didn't need to go out and purchase a new Windows version.
- doctorwho42 3y ago
  I had both friends and family working in Microsoft when Windows 10 was released, and it definitely was sold as the last OS that would just get free updates forever. And that they would run it as a loss-leader.

rcoveson 3y ago

This is ridiculous. Of course Windows 12 won't require a subscription. It will only be required if you want to disable the native data collection and advertising.

blibble 3y ago
> It will only be required if you want to disable the native data collection and advertising. maybe to begin with then the ads and the tracking appear later anyway
- ixwt 3y ago
  Yes, after each update.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
No, sorry, that will be the premium tier above the paid basic ad subsidized tier. Today they only offer the basic ad subsidized tier with a subscription period of their support window.
itsrobforreal 3y ago
There will never be any price you can pay MS to give up telemetry and tracking
- hilbert42 3y ago
  I'm surprised some enterprising hackers haven't hacked the binaries to nuke telemetry permanently (one used to see lots of Win hacks in the past). But then, perhaps I've not been looking hard enough (I mostly use Penguin).
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    I think some enterprising hackers have long ago switched to a less hostile OS.

bentt 3y ago

I don't know if you guys have heard but there's this other operating system Linux and

theiwahejdn 3y ago
[dead]
mekster 3y ago
That does not have the same catalog of games as Windows, that does not have the same catalog of useful third party apps as Mac, that does not have the ease of maintenance as Windows and Mac... I heard there will be the year of Linux desktop since maybe 15 years but there's a reason that hasn't happened.

tibbydudeza 3y ago

I would not mind a family pack - already paying for Office 365 - R1,400 ($71) a year for 5 computers. Includes 1TB cloud storage - cheaper than copy of Starfield.

aeurielesn 3y ago

Still stuck with using Windows to be able to play any latest AAA game.

callwhendone 3y ago
That's the only reason I ever log into Windows. Such an atrocious OS.
- deprecative 3y ago
  Not to be that guy but Windows is the best OS out right now with all its faults. I don't have to dick around with Linux, and my USB ports don't crap the bed every two seconds and I can actually manage my windows unlike with MacOS. That it plays games is just a bonus.
  - nrr 3y ago
    Why are windows hard to manage under macOS?
    - jorts 3y ago
      It just requires an app on Mac versus windows key + arrow to move windows around. It's a non-issue.
      - deprecative 3y ago
        Requiring an app is a blocking issue.
        nrr 3y ago
        I usually get away just fine with Control+Command+f to fullscreen the window, and Control+Up will open up Mission Control so that I can get two fullscreened windows side-by-side. It's all built into macOS. Windows 11 adds snap layouts, for which there is currently no analog, but this will let you do the side-by-side thing from earlier versions of Windows as long as you can tolerate the fullscreened windows becoming their own Space. (I actually find this preferable myself, but YMMV.)

issafram 3y ago

Adoption rate will be very small

Guvante 3y ago

Microsoft has charged a subscription to enterprise for Windows for a long time now. Finding information about subscriptions is unsurprising.

CommieBobDole 3y ago

As someone who is both a heavy Office user and who plays AAA games, I pretty much have to use Windows at least some of the time, which I'm OK with; it works and I'm used to it. And I would be perfectly OK to pay money to get a work-focused OS that doesn't have any of the Windows monetization tricks where it tries to harvest my data or bombard me with ads, so this sounds promising on the surface. But then I realize that I already pay for a work-focused OS, because Windows wasn't free - I bought a (somewhat expensive) copy of Windows 10 Professional when I built my current machine, and they still try to do all of that crap. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you have to buy Windows 12, then pay a monthly fee to keep using it, then get bombarded with ads and all your activity tracked and then sold to third parties.

henriquez 3y ago
Maybe they will do it like Hulu where you can pay an additional monthly fee to get ad-free access and then you’ll get ads anyway because [reasons]

haolez 3y ago

On a side note, in a universe where ReactOS[0] had comprehensive drivers support, would it be a better alternative to modern Windows? Or would desktop Linux? That's a fun thought exercize, at least for me :) [0] https://reactos.org/ https://reactos.org/

hilbert42 3y ago
I mostly use Linux but still have some Win-7 PCs and I'll never upgrade them. That said, I've tried ReactOS over the years but it's hardly even in alpha it's so incomplete. If it were usable I'd certainly use it. In my mind ReactOS conjures images of building the pyramids with a team of three—completion date estimate sometime between forever and eternity. Never has there ever been a software project that's been so long in gestation and still going nowhere. Unfortunately, I've given up on ReactOS but what I'd really love to know is why it's taken so long. Given the long saga of Windows and of MS's abuse of its users—many of whom are annoyed and disgruntled because they've little or no option but to continue to use Windows—then you'd think there'd be an almighty rush to develop a Windows clone. But no, there's stuff-all interest and it's always been so. I'd go as far to say the failure of ReactOS is one of the strangest and most curious events to occur in software history. One perhaps can understand why ReactOS was never developed in the US or even any Western country but why hasn't say Russia or China or other ex-Eastern Bloc countries thrown money into its development (seeing that much of its development already comes from that part of the world)? You'd reckon there'd even be both a strategic and financial advantage for these countries (as there was during the Cold War when they threw huge sums into developing an alternative source of tech).

0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago

Valve investing in SteamOS and Proton looks really prescient. It took years, but the investment has really paid off (for me, not sure Valve). Games is/was my only need for Windows and I finally ditched my Windows machine last year. I have had to give up on playing some incompatible titles, but there is still a wealth of options available.

phone8675309 3y ago
It's wild how much this has changed. When I started college in the early 2000s my one and only computer dual booted so I could run games and Windows-only university software on the Windows side and everything else under Linux. In the middle of college, I went full Linux with Wine for some games but moved the rest of my gaming to console. After college, I went back to dual booting because PC gaming was the more economical choice and I had bills to pay. Then I went back to full Linux with Wine for a number of years because I didn't have a lot of time to play anyway and keeping Windows running was a pain. After I made the jump to full time employee from contractor I went two machines - a Linux machine for everything but gaming and a gaming machine for gaming, moving the gaming machine to the every day driver for a couple of newly built gaming rigs. Now I'm full time Linux with Proton for most games and a single GPU-passthrough for anything that doesn't run on that. I could probably spend my entire time gaming and never touch a title that doesn't run under Proton and still have plenty of things to play with my friends and plenty of new releases to try. It is amazing how much a company run by former Microsoft employees has dumped into never having to deal with Windows again. It's been good for their bottom line too. You love to see it.

marcodiego 3y ago

They tried that in Brazil in 2006. Google for "computador pré-pago" to find out (in Portuguese) how it was intended to work.

cjbgkagh 3y ago

I have a bottle of champagne put aside for when I can finally quit windows. I’m actively porting my software stack and dependencies to cross platform so it’ll be pretty soon. They’ve clearly taken their monopoly position for granted and now there is serious inertia behind getting rid of them. I’m actually responding to customer demand for cross platform so the customers are clearly hating windows as well. The thing about ads is that quite often whatever you will pay to remove it, someone will pay more to put it back. Paying to remove ads is a signal that you’re the exact kind of person they want to send ads to. So not having ads has to both be either a moral position instead or a long term sustainability position. Microsoft expect their monopoly status to sustain them and have been ratcheting up their abuse of their monopoly to extract more money. In my view they’re on track to losing that privilege. Just recently YouTube has started blocking videos due to add blocker presence. I already pay producers via patreon and I guess I will just go watch over there. YouTube is a bad habit I need to break and their new policy will help me do that. Oh, and while I’m shitting in windows; the defender has made file access almost unusably slow, and I get intermittent stuttering both in games and with music on an absolute overkill of a computer speced this way precisely because it needs to run windows.

adolph 3y ago
> I have a bottle of champagne put aside for when I can finally quit windows. This is an odd incentive. One might consider it as a reason for using Windows as long as possible, since the bottle would be of a mature vintage and worth more? It's kind of like the furniture store that refunds people's mattress purchases if the baseball team wins. Given the advantage of not making people's purchase free retroactively, the promotion is kind of like betting against the team even though it is proclaimed as if it is in support of the team.
- cjbgkagh 3y ago
  If age was a consideration I would have bought an older bottle. I'm not a connoisseur, or even a lush. It's a large bottle so that I can share it with my friends, I'm the last windows holdout so they're waiting on me. My windows experience isn't even that bad as I disable most of the crap they try to foist upon me. It's the forced breaking upgrades that have caused the most personal grief. Apart from that it really is about responding to customer demand. I'd like to buy an apple laptop and hopefully by then there is a really good linux experience. I'd hate to go from Windows anti-consumerism to Apple anti-consumerism but it's hard to get good laptop hardware.

adolph 3y ago

If MS bundled in some hardware it would be similar to the iPhone Upgrade Program where one pays monthly and gets new hardware every year (which is bundled with the OS). How much of the consumer's payment hardware and how much OS/software? The consumer is just paying for value provided by peace of mind that they have something that works. (This is a hypo on my part as my personal value is to keep using the same phone until the OS is too far out of date.) https://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program https://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program

smallstepforman 3y ago

Most people will pay for it, I’m suprised it took MS that long to realise it. I love Haiku, use Linux professionally, also have a MacBook Pro, but lets face it, all the best software works best on Windows.

devwastaken 3y ago

Perfect time to buy a MacBook.

stuartjohnson12 3y ago

please don't

pietervdvn 3y ago

TL;DR: The canary channel of Windows contains some references which hint that Windows will become a subscription instead of an upfront sale.

_8j50 3y ago
More likely, if you choose to signin with a windows/live/entra id, your subscription activates it, else you out in a code. It would be utter incompetence when macos is a thing to not frog-boil consumers. It might be sunscription only, but probably not right away.

cultofmetatron 3y ago

I guess this canary found some Compulsory mOnotization

mekster 3y ago

There can't be a subscription based Windows. People refuse to pay (intentionally or financially) and they won't receive security updates on older OS and see how the world unfolds. It's already a mess that people are using so many different Windows versions and MS took the effort to beg users to upgrade. They will be unwinding that effort altogether not to mention bug the developers to support so many different OS versions. Apple has always been right that they release OS upgrades freely and see how much saner it is.

bioneuralnet 3y ago

How did we all get stuck in the worst possible [tech] timeline?

cyanydeez 3y ago
Capitalism
somat 3y ago
I am not sure about that. Somehow we ended up in a time line where there is this great mainstream full stack os where not only do you get the full source code you also are allowed to use and distribute it with very few restrictions. All of which is based on the critical generosity of a few key individuals. It is easy to imagine a history where this did not happen at all. The coolest thing is, say you are a snob like me, "Ah yes, your source code based os project is very nice and all but it's inclusiveness has made it far to big and messy for my small hipster mind" there are multiple source code based operating systems to choose from! Really it is pretty great.
Waterluvian 3y ago
This isn’t quite the worst. The worst never had globally free GPS or the Internet. It was all always totally private orgs with subscription services.
- leoqa 3y ago
  AOL in 2023
justinclift 3y ago
Learned sociopathy in decision making ranks. aka MBAs

john_the_writer 3y ago

I think if they did this manufacturers would get sued. You have to have windows on some computers. They're locked in. If you further have to pay, this might brick the device, and that I think would mean violating your rights of ownership.

donor20 3y ago
Huh? When you buy or install windows 12 they will ask you to agree to the subscription terms. You don’t own windows even now in most cases

k12sosse 3y ago

Alternate title: how Microsoft handed Linux the keys to desktop dominance I wonder if Windows will be included with GamePass™

linguae 3y ago
Windows has long had its detractors, yet during every upcoming Windows release when some controversial change causes some people to exclaim that this will finally be the year of the Linux desktop, most Windows users end up grinning and bearing it, and thus the year of the Linux desktop gets pushed back for the umpteenth time. Even if Microsoft charges subscription fees for Windows 12, I predict that people will either grin and bear it, or they will stick to Windows 11 for as long as they can. If enough people don’t upgrade to Windows 12, Microsoft might relent, like how Windows 8.1 brought back the smart menu and how later releases of Windows 10 addressed some criticism of earlier releases. But given previous patterns, I don’t expect a mass exodus to Linux.
- viraptor 3y ago
  It certainly pushed people towards MacOS and Linux. Office usage has also been decimated by Google docs and similar. Early education is largely on Chromebooks. Mass exodus to Linux won't happen, but W11 may become the next XP that people won't upgrade from for decades. And then the price of hardware+subscription will be compared to buying an otherwise overpriced Mac...
- archerx 3y ago
  I have been using windows since version 3.11, I will never pay a subscription for windows, will not install windows 11 and will not install windows 12. I have been a die hard windows user/fan for decades but windows is dying, the corpse is starting to stink. My future will probably have less microsoft and more Linux and MacOS once windows 10 is no longer usable.

jackvalentine 3y ago

Accepting that “charge a large amount of money up front for the OS” is a dead end business model I’d be okay with this if they stripped all the user hostile and adware crap back. They won’t.

justinclift 3y ago
Tiered subscriptions, with some kind of premium tier having only 1/2 the crapware and ads?
- squigz 3y ago
  Do you actually think that's a sane option?
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Who knows what MS considers sane though... ;)

navjack27 3y ago

We currently have two main versions of Windows 11 - Home and Professional, which cost a set price and include free updates for the lifetime of the operating system. I don't know about you but I personally paid for windows pro for workstations.

LoganDark 3y ago
Windows 11 Enterprise here. For home use.

bsder 3y ago

Oh please oh please oh please oh please. Rolling this out would be a business disaster studied for decades. I've know enough people already honked off about all the gorp in Windows 11 that many of them are refusing to move from Windows 10. This would be the icing on the cake to finally get them broken free from Windows as an OS. This, sadly, won't break the hegemony of Office 365, though.

grotorea 3y ago

Half-devil advocating here, but is this the end of the world? Right now, we have software that we expect that keeps being updated, but the company gets a one time payment. With a subscription, things get more stable financially and the company can adjust the budget accordingly. It also incentivized keeping Windows good and working so those subscriptions don't get cancelled.

lotsoweiners 3y ago
Windows is free when I buy a PC. If I need to pay additional money to keep the OS running then I may as well save some money in the first place and just use Linux.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  I hear System76 has some decent machines that don't have to stomach the cost of a Windows license. I believe Dell also offers a variant of the Dell XPS that is cheaper for having Linux?
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Framework laptops too: https://frame.work https://frame.work The have the OS choice (Windows Home, Pro, or "No OS") with the price listed for each. "No OS" is $0, the windows ones aren't.
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      My main complaint against them used to be the lack of GPU. But now, if I ever have a next laptop, it very well could be a Framework 16.
      - justinclift 3y ago
        16 not 15?

vincent-manis 3y ago

I fully defend Microsoft's right to do this (whether they actually will do it is as yet unknown), but it in no way benefits users. There is competition in the OS area, and a few people will gravitate to Linux; more might go to ChromeOS or MacOS. The subscription rate will have to be set so that it's not more expensive over say 3 years to buy a PC with Windows than it is to buy a comparable Mac (if they don't do that, they will be handing Apple a massive tool to increase sales). I think Chromebooks might do well in that environment, especially for naïve users (though they have their uses even for advanced users; I like my Chromebooks and their Linux VMs). You buy the machine, plug it in, and it fires up almost immediately; and your machine has software support now for 10 years at no cost (if you trust Google to deliver on that). I suspect that many canny purchasers will compare Microsoft's subscription cost to Google's ($0), and decide accordingly. My guess (and my track record is clear, in 1976 I predicted that Apple would be bankrupt within a year) is that Microsoft will offer a combined Windows/Office365 subscription, and a barebones “free” Windows that nags the user to “upgrade”.

toofy 3y ago
> The subscription rate will have to be set so that it’s not more expensive over say 3 years to buy a PC with Windows and than it is to buy a comparable Mac… i agree with your overall point. tho for me, i suspect the price would need to be significantly less than than that (PC price included.) my main driver is linux, but im on windows for probably 40% of work stuff. however, i have incredible subscription fatigue. its to the point now that i forego products regularly if i cant just buy it outright. i’ll happily even pay more than i would over time just to 1) not have to manage and deal with the constant little pin pricks of soooo many subscriptions, and 2) to feel like i own the thing. if windows goes subscription, i will almost certainly just move to mac for the things i cant do with linux and if my read of others is correct, i suspect many many others would do the same.
xg15 3y ago
I think the strongest competition is actually other Windows versions: People are usually fine with the Windows version they know and use - Microsoft already had to drag it's users kicking and screaming to update from XP to 7, then later from 8 to 10. I feel they'd have to up that kind of pressure by a lot to get people to switch not just to a new version, but now even one that requires a subscription. So if this ever becomes reality, I expect a massive campaign of FUD, dark patterns and deliberate incompatibility to get people to leave the old versions.

jiggawatts 3y ago

Vaguely similar to the notion of an “alive” business and a “dead” one, I look at any application or website with a community in the same light: the second that some suit-wearing MBA is allowed to alienate the power users, the contributors, the developers, or the equivalent, it’s downhill into inevitable doom from there. Sure, the bulk of the user pyramid might be retained — for a while — but the peak is where the action was. Like the growing shoot at the end of a branch, that’s where new applications are written, new content is produced, and new markets are created. The rest just consumes, uses, and follows. Microsoft is insisting on driving away their most important but least numerous users as hard and as fast as they possibly can. No metrics will show the consequences of these decisions, and no one will be punished for tragically abusing the commons. I tiny vocal minority is lost, sure, but who cares? They were troublemakers and hard to market to! Good riddance. The uptake of the each new Windows version is slower and slower than the one before. The excitement and innovation has been replaced by telemetry and built in crapware. People stood in line to buy a copy of Windows 95. Hardly anyone will install Windows 12 on purpose.

xg15 3y ago
> Sure, the bulk of the user pyramid might be retained — for a while — but the peak is where the action was. Like the growing shoot at the end of a branch, that’s where new applications are written, new content is produced, and new markets are created. The rest just consumes, uses, and follows. And the suit-wearing MBA will probably say "yup, that's fine, it's harvest time!"

elforce002 3y ago

Interesting. I bought a Mac this year and I don't think I'll be coming back to windows and if this is their endgame, PC makers will go a different route too.

0dayz 3y ago

Honestly, I would be fine with Microsoft having a subscription IF they made Windows executable interoperable with Linux. If I have to pay a tax to make software for Windows work flawlessly on Linux, I would take it (I already donate to Wine).