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anecdotal evidence, but even my non-IT friends prefer to try out Linux than upgrade to w11. Meanwhile most corporate already swapped to w11. 53% is a huge fail

anecdotal evidence, but even my non-IT friends prefer to try out Linux than upgrade to w11. Meanwhile most corporate already swapped to w11. 53% is a huge failure on MS part, but that's what happens when you design OS to be a bad copy of your competition.

eviks 1y ago
Interesting, how many of your friends stuck with Linux after trying out?
- throwcarsales 1y ago
  Just one data point, but I have gone full Linux Mint on almost all my computers. Being a MS guy since 1991 at 7 years old. Remember being in aw at windows 95 at 11-12. Avoided apples my whole life. Seeing how much better my friends apple computers ran than my modern windows computers, I just went full Linux. Loving it. Telling my parents and friends to consider it instead of buying a new computer to replace the 'slow one'.
  - hypercube33 1y ago
    I have one laptop I got used to be able to daily drive Linux and for now am on Zorin Pro. A lot of people don't like paying for support, or Linux, and v17 definitely has some problems but so far I'm impressed how well it runs win32 stuff out of the box and looks great. Support is pretty awesome so far too. Also yeah, I could do without paying just fine and work as basically a Windows engineer so I can Google stuff but I'm just over trying to deal with getting Linux working. I do also have a steam deck and gaming is stellar on Proton but you still need Windows for DRM triple a games.
    - throwcarsales 1y ago
      If you put your Linux questions into any decent AI it basically always solves your problems. Or atleast it did for my beginner tier issues I guess.
- wetpaws 1y ago
  [dead]
- stego-tech 1y ago
  Adding another datapoint: We're down to just three Windows boxes (four if you count the Xbox Series X) in our household, and are likely to winnow that down further following the resounding success of a Linux gaming box on old Sandy Bridge CPU + GTX 970 GPU + HDD. The eldest gamer in the household is so sick of Microsoft's nonsense that the only reason they're not fully on Linux already is because their production box is reliant upon Intel RST, which makes dual-booting a dangerous game. Including the rest of my family, we have but one other Windows box amongst an extended family of ~dozen folks. Everyone else has moved to macOS or Linux. Speaking from an IT perspective, I've also seen more organizations court macOS as a standard machine in lieu of Win11, especially with Microsoft's shift to InTune and away from Group Policy. Microsoft thought inertia would carry their customers into the cloud, but the costs involved posed enough of a speed bump that customers are reconsidering their Microsoft estate, provided they weren't already in Azure and/or didn't have M365 E5. It's a bloodbath. Microsoft extending free support is tacit acknowledgement they s*t the bed and have no other gameplan ready to go right now.
  - Yeul 1y ago
    The desktop computer is dying. The only reason why I still have one is because I play videogames. Serious stuff is done on my phone. If we want to talk about disaster it's that Microsoft lost the smartphone battle. The real future of computing.
    - keyringlight 1y ago
      The phone/tablet as most common 'personal computer' is what I see that will be a constant bleed on the audience for the desktop PC. At least for the home audience the price trends over the past decade seems like a big deterrence, and the old model of having a desktop for home use and an enthusiast upgrading/modernizing it involves more. I do a fair amount of gaming on my 8-9 year old PC, and it's hard to justify an upgrade (which at this point is a whole new build) for more recent games versus getting a PS5 for 400 bucks or so (or a used one for 200-300) which is less than a reasonably capable/modern GPU by itself. I guess my concern is where are the gradual on-ramps for getting people into that desktop PC (windows or otherwise) environment so they can explore and discover what it enables for them? There's no trouble if you already know you're an enthusiast, you can make an informed decision if the bill of parts is worth it, and I don't see professional-workstations going away as a tool.
- ryanjshaw 1y ago
  Spent about 12mo on Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, Mint) and there were just too many issues. Ubuntu had weird quirks that almost always turned out to be related to my using a snap package. Of course I wasted countless hours getting to the point where I realised that was the issue. Mint stopped booting once for unknown reasons on modern hardware and I had to reinstall. Another time I wasted half my day trying to get my whatever-the-distro-calls-taskbar to reappear when it decided to disappear. Debian was stable but every time I had an issue I had to battle through advice that was too new to apply. Linux is great at making me feel like I’m crazy - I must have wasted 2 hours trying to figure out how to get an app image to run nicely from the whatever-the-distro-calls-a-start-button. Everything seemed so complex and backwards compared to Windows. I have to configure the icon myself?! This was automatic in Windows 3.1. I wasted so much time thinking I was missing a better way only to realise, nope, this is the way. It was bizarre that everybody was happy to run a random 3rd party GitHub app to solve this. Unbelievable that in 2025 downloading an app and getting an icon to start it involved so much complexity (appimage vs flatpak vs snap vs gz vs sh… who the hell has time to figure this out?!). Eventually I decided I’d had enough and don’t want to spend the rest of my life messing around like I’m a teenager with all the time in the world, and switched everything over to Apple, which is working out great.
  - stalfosknight 1y ago
    And yet, the "Year of the Linux Desktop" is perpetually coming/here.
    - keyringlight 1y ago
      The impression I have is that YotLD windows migration evangelism is honest so long as you don't go off the beaten track, but as soon as you do it gets hairy quick and that's where I find some of the evangelists dishonest by omission. It's fine if you just use a browser, or software as provided by a repository, or your steam games work and you don't need/want to mod/tinker with them. Otherwise you might be dropping someone recently transplanted into unfamiliar territory and they haven't build up a new knowledge base yet.
  - prmoustache 1y ago
fluidcruft 1y ago
Don't forget Windows 10 was marketed by Microsoft as the final version of Windows. Plenty of people are probably fed up with Microsoft's games.
- doubled112 1y ago
  They did give everybody on Windows 10 the Windows 11 upgrade. Is that similar? That would make it the last version you'll have to pay for. At least for most people. Some conditions may apply: * hardware compatibility permitting * until we decide otherwise * unless “the numbers” stop climbing * until AI suggests so
  - stubish 1y ago
    Machines were still being sold without TPM modules when Windows 10 was 'last Windows', so no.
    - doubled112 1y ago
      Some conditions may apply: * hardware compatibility permitting
- p_ing 1y ago
  It was never marketed as such; it was a single dev evangelist running their mouth.
  - fluidcruft 1y ago
    > When I reached out to Microsoft about Nixon’s comments, the company didn’t dismiss them at all. “Recent comments at Ignite about Windows 10 are reflective of the way Windows will be delivered as a service bringing new innovations and updates in an ongoing manner, with continuous value for our consumer and business customers,” says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “We aren’t speaking to future branding at this time, but customers can be confident Windows 10 will remain up-to-date and power a variety of devices from PCs to phones to Surface Hub to HoloLens and Xbox. We look forward to a long future of Windows innovations.” 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...
CodesInChaos 1y ago
How is it working for your non IT friends? I made the switch when Windows 8.1 went out of support, rather than switch to 10. And while proton worked much better for gaming than expected, there were enough complications to make the switch difficult for a non technical person.
- Xelbair 1y ago
  after short help with bumping kernel version for one friend(newest AMD cards weren't supported in default kernel included with mint at that point).. it just works - they are gaming without issues.
leptons 1y ago
The "bad copy of your competition" is probably in relation to the Windows 11 program launcher that resembles the centered design of the MacOS launcher. But that can be easily removed using tools like Explorer Patcher and Open Shell. https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu The thing that made me switch to Linux is Microsoft's pushing AI into everything. I do not want their AI constantly looking over my shoulder.
- throawayonthe 1y ago
  windows 11 looks like a KDE rice
- cjbgkagh 1y ago
  When I made a complaint about their UI changes being unintuitive the response was that the intent was to make Windows more familiar to people un-familiar to Windows, as in make it more familiar to those who use Macs. They assume existing windows users are a captured audience and are trying to capture the Mac market without realizing that they're instead making everything much worse. Though now ironically with Apple going the whole 'glass' detour people using Macs may be more familiar with Windows. Could be a win for the Microsoft fast follower strategy - so what do I know. I wouldn't have bet on Apple fumbling but here we are. I still prefer Linux to both Apple and Windows.
- hollandheese 1y ago
  There's literally options in taskbar settings to change that. You don't need another program.

eviks 1y ago

Interesting, how many of your friends stuck with Linux after trying out?

throwcarsales 1y ago
Just one data point, but I have gone full Linux Mint on almost all my computers. Being a MS guy since 1991 at 7 years old. Remember being in aw at windows 95 at 11-12. Avoided apples my whole life. Seeing how much better my friends apple computers ran than my modern windows computers, I just went full Linux. Loving it. Telling my parents and friends to consider it instead of buying a new computer to replace the 'slow one'.
- hypercube33 1y ago
  I have one laptop I got used to be able to daily drive Linux and for now am on Zorin Pro. A lot of people don't like paying for support, or Linux, and v17 definitely has some problems but so far I'm impressed how well it runs win32 stuff out of the box and looks great. Support is pretty awesome so far too. Also yeah, I could do without paying just fine and work as basically a Windows engineer so I can Google stuff but I'm just over trying to deal with getting Linux working. I do also have a steam deck and gaming is stellar on Proton but you still need Windows for DRM triple a games.
  - throwcarsales 1y ago
    If you put your Linux questions into any decent AI it basically always solves your problems. Or atleast it did for my beginner tier issues I guess.
wetpaws 1y ago
[dead]
stego-tech 1y ago
Adding another datapoint: We're down to just three Windows boxes (four if you count the Xbox Series X) in our household, and are likely to winnow that down further following the resounding success of a Linux gaming box on old Sandy Bridge CPU + GTX 970 GPU + HDD. The eldest gamer in the household is so sick of Microsoft's nonsense that the only reason they're not fully on Linux already is because their production box is reliant upon Intel RST, which makes dual-booting a dangerous game. Including the rest of my family, we have but one other Windows box amongst an extended family of ~dozen folks. Everyone else has moved to macOS or Linux. Speaking from an IT perspective, I've also seen more organizations court macOS as a standard machine in lieu of Win11, especially with Microsoft's shift to InTune and away from Group Policy. Microsoft thought inertia would carry their customers into the cloud, but the costs involved posed enough of a speed bump that customers are reconsidering their Microsoft estate, provided they weren't already in Azure and/or didn't have M365 E5. It's a bloodbath. Microsoft extending free support is tacit acknowledgement they s*t the bed and have no other gameplan ready to go right now.
- Yeul 1y ago
  The desktop computer is dying. The only reason why I still have one is because I play videogames. Serious stuff is done on my phone. If we want to talk about disaster it's that Microsoft lost the smartphone battle. The real future of computing.
  - keyringlight 1y ago
    The phone/tablet as most common 'personal computer' is what I see that will be a constant bleed on the audience for the desktop PC. At least for the home audience the price trends over the past decade seems like a big deterrence, and the old model of having a desktop for home use and an enthusiast upgrading/modernizing it involves more. I do a fair amount of gaming on my 8-9 year old PC, and it's hard to justify an upgrade (which at this point is a whole new build) for more recent games versus getting a PS5 for 400 bucks or so (or a used one for 200-300) which is less than a reasonably capable/modern GPU by itself. I guess my concern is where are the gradual on-ramps for getting people into that desktop PC (windows or otherwise) environment so they can explore and discover what it enables for them? There's no trouble if you already know you're an enthusiast, you can make an informed decision if the bill of parts is worth it, and I don't see professional-workstations going away as a tool.
ryanjshaw 1y ago
Spent about 12mo on Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, Mint) and there were just too many issues. Ubuntu had weird quirks that almost always turned out to be related to my using a snap package. Of course I wasted countless hours getting to the point where I realised that was the issue. Mint stopped booting once for unknown reasons on modern hardware and I had to reinstall. Another time I wasted half my day trying to get my whatever-the-distro-calls-taskbar to reappear when it decided to disappear. Debian was stable but every time I had an issue I had to battle through advice that was too new to apply. Linux is great at making me feel like I’m crazy - I must have wasted 2 hours trying to figure out how to get an app image to run nicely from the whatever-the-distro-calls-a-start-button. Everything seemed so complex and backwards compared to Windows. I have to configure the icon myself?! This was automatic in Windows 3.1. I wasted so much time thinking I was missing a better way only to realise, nope, this is the way. It was bizarre that everybody was happy to run a random 3rd party GitHub app to solve this. Unbelievable that in 2025 downloading an app and getting an icon to start it involved so much complexity (appimage vs flatpak vs snap vs gz vs sh… who the hell has time to figure this out?!). Eventually I decided I’d had enough and don’t want to spend the rest of my life messing around like I’m a teenager with all the time in the world, and switched everything over to Apple, which is working out great.
- stalfosknight 1y ago
  And yet, the "Year of the Linux Desktop" is perpetually coming/here.
  - keyringlight 1y ago
    The impression I have is that YotLD windows migration evangelism is honest so long as you don't go off the beaten track, but as soon as you do it gets hairy quick and that's where I find some of the evangelists dishonest by omission. It's fine if you just use a browser, or software as provided by a repository, or your steam games work and you don't need/want to mod/tinker with them. Otherwise you might be dropping someone recently transplanted into unfamiliar territory and they haven't build up a new knowledge base yet.
- prmoustache 1y ago

fluidcruft 1y ago

Don't forget Windows 10 was marketed by Microsoft as the final version of Windows. Plenty of people are probably fed up with Microsoft's games.

doubled112 1y ago
They did give everybody on Windows 10 the Windows 11 upgrade. Is that similar? That would make it the last version you'll have to pay for. At least for most people. Some conditions may apply: * hardware compatibility permitting * until we decide otherwise * unless “the numbers” stop climbing * until AI suggests so
- stubish 1y ago
  Machines were still being sold without TPM modules when Windows 10 was 'last Windows', so no.
  - doubled112 1y ago
    Some conditions may apply: * hardware compatibility permitting
p_ing 1y ago
It was never marketed as such; it was a single dev evangelist running their mouth.
- fluidcruft 1y ago
  > When I reached out to Microsoft about Nixon’s comments, the company didn’t dismiss them at all. “Recent comments at Ignite about Windows 10 are reflective of the way Windows will be delivered as a service bringing new innovations and updates in an ongoing manner, with continuous value for our consumer and business customers,” says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “We aren’t speaking to future branding at this time, but customers can be confident Windows 10 will remain up-to-date and power a variety of devices from PCs to phones to Surface Hub to HoloLens and Xbox. We look forward to a long future of Windows innovations.” 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...

CodesInChaos 1y ago

How is it working for your non IT friends? I made the switch when Windows 8.1 went out of support, rather than switch to 10. And while proton worked much better for gaming than expected, there were enough complications to make the switch difficult for a non technical person.

Xelbair 1y ago
after short help with bumping kernel version for one friend(newest AMD cards weren't supported in default kernel included with mint at that point).. it just works - they are gaming without issues.

leptons 1y ago

The "bad copy of your competition" is probably in relation to the Windows 11 program launcher that resembles the centered design of the MacOS launcher. But that can be easily removed using tools like Explorer Patcher and Open Shell. https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu The thing that made me switch to Linux is Microsoft's pushing AI into everything. I do not want their AI constantly looking over my shoulder.

throawayonthe 1y ago
windows 11 looks like a KDE rice
cjbgkagh 1y ago
When I made a complaint about their UI changes being unintuitive the response was that the intent was to make Windows more familiar to people un-familiar to Windows, as in make it more familiar to those who use Macs. They assume existing windows users are a captured audience and are trying to capture the Mac market without realizing that they're instead making everything much worse. Though now ironically with Apple going the whole 'glass' detour people using Macs may be more familiar with Windows. Could be a win for the Microsoft fast follower strategy - so what do I know. I wouldn't have bet on Apple fumbling but here we are. I still prefer Linux to both Apple and Windows.
hollandheese 1y ago
There's literally options in taskbar settings to change that. You don't need another program.