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I'm also 100% convinced Microsoft will introduce mandatory code signing at some point and make it so that you can only ever install software from Windows Store.

• agilob 2y ago
  That's the main reason why Valve is investing in Linux and Steam Deck.
  • eru 2y ago
    Apropos, running Steam on my Archlinux Desktop with Windows compatibility turned on works really, really well. Much better than what I remembered from the bad old days of trying to get stuff running in Wine.
    • tmikaeld 2y ago
      I second that, everything "just works" as you'd expect it to. If StreamOS can get widespread and they start to introduce desktop apps to the store, I think they can take some market share.
      • herbst 2y ago
        Imo just works is an understatement. Many games work better than ever.
        • throwaway48476 2y ago
          On low power hardware many games run better because they not strangled by windows bloat.
          • eru 2y ago
            How bloated is Windows actually?
            • throwaway48476 2y ago
              Idles at 50% CPU usage running background tasks on a dual core. For steam deck, enough to be noticeable in FPS.
              • eru 2y ago
                Is that 50% CPU usage across all cores? That's impressive (as in impressively bad). I haven't used Windows in a few years, but I was actually fairly happy with Windows 10 as a casual user.
                • throwaway48476 2y ago
                  One core, broadwell generation. Devs don't test on low spec machines and MS fired the team that maintained the testing PC zoo a decade ago.
              • indemnity 2y ago
                I have a 9950X3D and doing nothing Windows still lights up a core 5-20% every few seconds doing god knows what. Linux on the same hardware does not.
        • MonkeyClub 2y ago
          I still have a Windows computer for a single reason: PUBG on Steam. If that worked on Linux, I would not longer need Windows at all...
          • ThatMedicIsASpy 2y ago
            PUBG - the game that must have tried every different AC at some point. Plus layering multiple at the same time. I am glad they've added bots years ago which made me stop playing so I do not miss it.
      • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
        > everything "just works" Just a note to readers who are interested in this: some games in your Steam library may still not work with Proton, but the ones that do work should have rather few issues. (I play exclusively on a Steam Deck so “should” is in reference to the variance in hardware among bespoke machines.)
    • consp 2y ago
      Wine and it's alternatives have greatly profited from valve going this route and as a result all software runs better. It's a gradual improvement over time and we are past the early stages. I'm still running a gaming PC on windows but that is going to end quite soon if Microsoft keeps doing these things.
      • erikerikson 2y ago
        Stream actually paid for contributions to Wine if I understand correctly. I too planning to use a gaming centric distro for my next gaming PC build. The horseshit they've been pushing at me on 10 has been atrocious. The lie that 10 would be the last. Injecting pages into Chrome. Windows acts more and more like literal malware.
        • nialv7 2y ago
          Yes, steam contracts CodeWeavers which is the main company that supports the development of wine.
        • eru 2y ago
          > I too planning to use a gaming centric distro for my next gaming PC build. I don't find that the distribution makes that much of a difference? I just use Arch Linux, and install all the programs (gaming centric or otherwise) that I need when I need them. I guess I'm lucky, because the Steam Deck's distribution is based on Arch Linux, but I used it before it was cool. I suspect the main differences between the distributions is what you get by default, and that can be a huge factor in terms of convenience?
          • erikerikson 2y ago
            Yeah and good on you for using Arch but gaming distros are designed to support dummies, meaning people like me that don't really want to build the OS from the ground up get to coast. We just want to use it. I know a fair bit about OS internals but especially when I'm gaming I want to play rather than read and follow technical docs. Sorry, not sorry.
    • nobodyandproud 2y ago
      Linux Mint with Lutris and Wine. I completely removed Windows from all of my personal notebooks and workstations.
      • astrobase_go 2y ago
        I game using Steam on Pop_OS![1] with a home-built AMD machine and, while I know there are some background processes (Proton) that run to establish and maintain a compatibility layer, it's nearly seamless to me as a user. The most I really see is a progress bar that appears before some games where Vulcan shaders have to be pre-rendered. In my experience everything needed for Windows-native games to run on Linux is handled automatically, without any configuration, runtime flags, or anything else. Early on I consulted ProtonDB to see if my games would run, but honestly now I don't even look at it any more. While YMMV depending on the games you play, I haven't encountered really any major bugs and zero crashes. The most I found was some strange shadow texture rendering artifacting in Baldur's Gate 3, but it was contained to a particular part of a particular map. A decade ago it was kind of rough, but now? I am never going back to Windows for gaming. Playing games on Linux is light-years better than what it used to be. If you're curious but haven't tried it because you had bad experiences in the past, I'd encourage anyone to give it another go. 1: https://system76.com/pop/ https://system76.com/pop/
    • throwaway48476 2y ago
      Valve started with win8, almost 15 years ago now.
  • danielktdoranie 2y ago
    The Steam Deck has done well, and releasing SteamOS for free so people can install it on their own PCs is great, but I think they should make a “Steam PC” they could sell. The majority of gamers aren’t technical and buy pre-built PCs. A Steam PC with Steam OS pre-installed would make it easy for these people to game on Linux and pump up the Linux gaming share of the gaming market.
    • woleium 2y ago
      the steam pc is the newly announced xbox, no?
• donnachangstein 2y ago
  > I'm also 100% convinced Microsoft will introduce mandatory code signing at some point and make it so that you can only ever install software from Windows Store 2017 called. It wants Windows S Mode back. Needless to say it still isn't very popular. But this has been around for <checks notes> 8 years now
  • samiv 2y ago
    Yep, the technology is already there. Just a question of time before they flip the switch for good and force it down everyone's throat and call it "enhanced security and user experience".
    • throwaway48476 2y ago
      Windows S failed hard so they have a new strategy. Every new CPU ships with M$'s Pluton root of trust. For 'security' everything will have to be signed. They consider the user to be the threat actor. Eventually they will charge a percsnt fee for using their signing service.
      • erikerikson 2y ago
        Have you met my mother in law? She really is.
      • donnachangstein 2y ago
        This sounds like the UEFI Secure Boot FUD from > 10 years ago. That also didn't turn out like they predicted.
        • throwaway48476 2y ago
          The desire for control never went away.
          • octacat 2y ago
            The moment they roll it as mandatory - people would stop updating.
• throwaway290 2y ago
  Should be mentioned this is way worse than Apple Having to use an account to get apps from app store (Apple) vs. having to use an account to install and use the OS in the first place (Microsoft) = not even a a competition
  • djaychela 2y ago
    Until you need to download something from the app store (happened to me the other day on a mac I wiped and then needed to bring on holiday so now I need to go through the process again afterwards)
    • freehorse 2y ago
      Can you install anything from the windows store without a Microsoft account, or from google play without a google one? I assume this is already the state of affairs since ever, but except iOS all the rest allow you to install stuff outside their stores.
      • rkharsan64 2y ago
        You can install things from Windows/Microsoft Store without an account.
        • tonyedgecombe 2y ago
          I’m sure it has forced me to login. I suppose I could have fallen for some dark pattern in the UI though. God I hate what this industry has become.
          • freehorse 2y ago
            I am also pretty sure that I thought I had to log in years ago I had windows. Probably also fell victim of the UI.
        • throwaway290 2y ago
• cedws 2y ago
  That would never work, they would have to have some kind of override. Microsoft doesn’t have that kind of leverage over Windows users because they don’t have tight vertical integration. If Windows 12 enforced that, users would just stay on Windows 11 and MS’ leverage would decrease even further.
  • sshine 2y ago
    I can’t believe people didn’t stay on Windows 7. It seems to have slid into some always-online ad-filled cloud hellhole since. Office365 is worse than Office 2000. This is the OEM strategy still at play. You gotta hand it to Bill Gates for capturing PCs for decades. People truly don’t care how poor their operating system behaves, because your only other option is to buy a Mac.
    • 3np 2y ago
      Some do, I guess. https://github.com/i486girl/win7-sp2 https://github.com/i486girl/win7-sp2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43445103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43445103
    • jasode 2y ago
      >I can’t believe people didn’t stay on Windows 7. Normal mainstream users can't stay on very old operating systems like Windows 7 because they'll eventually be forced to install newer software that's not compatible with it. Outside actors other than Microsoft force os upgrades. - buy a new printer and it only has drivers for newer os like Windows 10/11 and later - need for installing newer software like latest versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Adobe suite, TurboTax 2024, etc. They don't install on Win7. For Windows 7, the last version of Chrome was January 2023. Last version of Firefox was August 2024. So setting aside commercial apps like Adobe, TurboTax, etc. -- why can't a user just stay with old version of Mozilla Firefox that's compatible with Win7 and turn off updates?!? Because bank websites like JP Morgan will block the user with an error "You need to upgrade your web browser" because the SSL/TLS encryption algorithms in old Firefox versions are obsolete. Deliberately trying to freeze your computer on Windows 7 or Windows XP means relegating it into a "museum piece" that becomes less and less useful for practical real-world tasks. That's ok for an isolated machine that runs old video games but no good for online banking.
• facile3232 2y ago
  > They are envious of the Google and Apple walled gardens/cashcows and are now determined to turn Windows into one. Which is perplexing, because this is essentially the opposite strategy than what gave windows value to begin with.
  • tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    It would be amusing for Microsoft to end up in a situation where developers don’t want to target Windows anymore, just like Apple in the 90’s. Perhaps they think it doesn’t matter once everything is in the cloud.
    • debugnik 2y ago
      We're most of the way there with the switch to web apps and their native wrappers, even Microsoft isn't using their own UI toolkits anymore. The only segments left targeting Windows as a platform are games, replacements/extensions to the OS tools, and a bunch of legacy .NET LOB apps. And since the Steam Deck and clones, Wine/Proton are (very) slowly becoming the actual target for games rather than Windows.
    • extraduder_ire 2y ago
      I think that long before that developers will still be targeting the windows APIs, even if they're not intending their software for windows.
  • heresie-dabord 2y ago
    > Which is perplexing, because this is essentially the opposite strategy than what gave windows value to begin with. Consider how much has changed since the first 25 years of MSFT. Both in business and in life in general.
• xattt 2y ago
  Isn’t that the point of Pluton? (1) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/hardware-security/pluton/microsoft-pluton-security-processor https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/hardware-...
  • lozenge 2y ago
    And the user-facing feature Smart App Control- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/application-security/application-control/app-control-for-business/appcontrol https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/applicati...
• 0xmarcin 2y ago
  I highly doubt it, Windows is known for its stellar backward compatibility. Code signing means a lot of older software, that is still in use, would not be able to install or run. This is not going to happen (at least in the enterprise).
  • samiv 2y ago
    I have mad respect for Microsoft engineers for the compatibility work that they've done over the past decades. It is indeed superb that you can take even today an old Win32 executable and run it and it'll just work. But I expect the new leadership will not put much value on this. I imagine it'd play out that first to "to enhance the security and improve the UX" they'll start a shoving a bunch of nagging dialogs in the users face "this app is not safe" etc. Then they'll add a flag to enable "unsafe mode" where the user can run unverified / unsigned code. Then finally they'll just nuke the flag. After all requiring that the ecosystem with the most "important" apps such as their own office suite, slack, adobe etc. grind out new versions with digital signing is not out of alignment with these companies incentives and development cycles either. In fact I would not find it surprising if these companies would actually be approached by Microsoft to participate in any such scheme and get offered some kind of "discount" or reward (whether it's app store discount or whatever else) and these companies would only see it strengthening their own moats against any possible competition. And I'm talking about the consumer use case, not the corporate.
    • anthk 2y ago
      You don't know how many ad-hoc legacy apps based on Java/C# are out there. Zillions. If you want to give GNU/Linux a huge chunk of share (Java and C# code from early 00's/2010 will run everywhere), MS would face a huge disaster and billions of loses.
  • hulitu 2y ago
    > Windows is known for its stellar backward compatibility. was
  • throwaway48476 2y ago
    Users value backwards compatability. Users aren't the customers anymore and don't drive KPIs.
• grishka 2y ago
  Mandatory code signing is meaningless without secure boot though, which can't be made mandatory on x86 systems.
  • jychang 2y ago
    Good thing they’re trying to move off x86, then
  • throwaway48476 2y ago
    MS's pluton is in every new CPU.
    • grishka 2y ago
      And? Just, uh, boot without secure boot and patch things until they work again without enforcing code signing? The only way this sort of thing could be possibly partially enforced is by remote attestation for apps that depend on a server to function. So do what iOS jailbreaks did, except you don't need a vulnerability to start because secure boot will always be optional.
      • throwaway48476 2y ago
        Secure boot will not always remain optional for windows.
        • grishka 2y ago
          And how could that possibly be enforced?
          • throwaway48476 2y ago
            Same way it works for anti cheat.
            • grishka 2y ago
• throwaway48476 2y ago
  They tried with windows S. No one bought it and if they did by mistake they returned it. >Windows is no longer a product for users, the users of Windows are the product for Microsoft to be shoved into the Azure sales funnel. So true. I won't be running win11 outside of a VM and anything but win11 IoT. You know where to find it...
• bitwize 2y ago
  This is likely why the TPM2 requirement is a thing for Windows 11: Microsoft wants to migrate all Windows users onto a hardware base with nigh-uncrackable security/DRM protection, such that everything from power on to application is signed, approved code. For "security". And people will buy it. Because "general purpose computing" is a niche feature for nerds. (Astronaut 2: Always has been.) And it presents enough problems and extra work that most consumers woyld gladly give it up. Most consumers just want something thet can do Facebook/Excel/Spotify/Netflix/games with.
• signal11 2y ago
  This misses how Microsoft makes money from Windows. Taking a cut of apps isn’t that useful because most people don’t install many apps. Of course it’s still welcome revenue, especially for games, but Steam has too much goodwill there, and Epic won’t still idly by (and Adobe etc in other domains). Instead Microsoft is trying to upsell cloud storage, backup and ad-free email (along with Office apps) with Microsoft 365. And on the biz side they’re getting into the biz of offering managed patched online Windows VDIs, kind of like Citrix. Also Microsoft Store-only Windows is a deal killer for Windows in businesses. A lot of specialised LOB (line of business) apps run on Windows and the Store is a non-starter for those. And in home contexts there’s a bunch of legacy apps that people keep Windows for, dropping support for them will mean switching to ChromeOS or macOS just got easier. So yeah — I fully agree they’ll absolutely shove you in into the Azure or M365 sales funnel, and individual users no longer feel like a priority. But non-store apps aren’t quite dead yet.
  • free_bip 2y ago
    The app-store-only restriction would likely be for home edition. If you want custom apps, you'll need pro or business licenses.
• octacat 2y ago
  Similar why gatekeeper exists on Mac. This would mean that old software would stop to work, though. Which is a bit anti-microsoft politics. Without running all the old unsigned software Win is not Win anymore.
• octacat 2y ago
  Would not fly. Developers would not go into the store. Because everyone knows, that 30% tax would be next (basically it is the current situation on the Mac, apple could pull the switch on gatekeeper any time). And, because a lot of modern apps are just electron wrappers, people would just move to the web versions for everything. Which means killing their own platform.