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Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

• weq 1y ago
  Upgrade from windows 10 to Windows XP or Windows 7. All the holes have been found already.
• trinsic2 1y ago
  I am a IT solutions provider for the public and small business. I think the changes to Windows 11 is gearing up to work with organizations to create a surveillance state. So I have to decided to promote Linux over Windows for computers I build for customers. If you have any suggestions on how I can make this promotion, better let me know.
  • potsandpans 1y ago
    How could they create something that already exists?
  • rolph 1y ago
    you should look into the idea that you are a business, using linux installs in a way that may be subject to license. if you promote, facillitate, provide resources for installation free of charge, thats probably fine. providing a system for sale, with linux pre-installed, may require, at least some attribution.
    • trinsic2 1y ago
      Ok thanks for that reminder. I'll look into that.
      • gerdesj 1y ago
        Don't bother - no idea what your parent is up to. Linux - the kernel is GPL 2 - that means you can use it to your heart's content. If you make changes, it would be nice if you shared them, please do. A Linux distro will generally have a similar license. Again the idea is that positive changes that you make are made available to everyone. That is the idea of the GNU Public License: If you take our freely available stuff and add to it, you should make your changes public too. Seems fair!
        • rolph 1y ago
          so if someone takes our freely available stuff, bundles it with a newly assembled system, and sells them, at a marked up price, like normal business does, it wont be an issue if no mention is made of GPL2 and what that means for the end user. the idea that positive changes are made available to everyone, is not yet broadly salient. at least now, poster is probably aware of that condition. you seem to be up on GPL2 , what happens when someone packages distros on disk or stick, and sells them for profit ? thats something to be aware of as well.
          • bee_rider 1y ago
            Can you say specifically what you this there is to be concerned about, and why you think it is a problem? Just asking questions like this is not an effective warning, I think. We should be direct, to avoid spreading uncertainty and doubt.
          • whartung 1y ago
            They stick the licenses in the back of whatever pack of documents are used during the sale. Heck, print it on the back of the work order in small print with a gray font. On my motorcycle, there’s an option to view the software licenses used on the bike. The GPL is in there somewhere. So are a lot of other things. And, no, during checkout at the dealer, we didn’t spend any time talking about software licenses. As a bundler you’re obligated to provide the licenses. You’re not obliged to point them out, highlight them, point folks to links, or archives, or explain how they work or what rights users may have. They just have to be available.
            • rolph 1y ago
              ok, so someone makes the license available for end user to read or not, thats one down for providers responsibility. now the next is the nature of linux as a common good, generated by many contributors over some time. is it acceptable for anyone to turn a profit from distributing copies of linux on media, or as a component of a retail unit, for an additional price ? how does that scale up? suppose thousands of ISOs or live distros are sold, enriching the seller by some thousands of dollars, is that ok? could i, or you, or anyone, burn a couple hundred disks, or rufus thumbdrives, then sell them for $40 each, and have no concerns ? the submission, links to what is clearly, a profit oriented business. what limitations exist? none if you just pack a GPL2 in with it? can he charge a fee as if he is selling linux to the end user? is public awareness, and availability a suitable contra for financial profit from sale of a product of many contributions from many individuals over many years? just how philanthropic is the community?
  • Loughla 1y ago
    Choose the right distro and automate updates of possible. Mint is the softest landing for Windows users. But they never ever ever ever update anything on their own. Ever. Forever.
    • trinsic2 1y ago
      Yea I need to think of a good way to automate updates..
      • gerdesj 1y ago
        "automate updates" A device can be woken up at silly o'clock and "apt update && apt upgrade && apt autoremove && shutdown -r now" can be run via cron. apt as deployed by Debian itself has options for automatic updates (via cron), which is the better option. Have a look under /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/
        • trinsic2 1y ago
          I was thinking about setting up a package as part of the system build to do remote maintenance and I wondered if manually doing those updates every six months would be too long of a window. That way if something breaks, I can visit the customers location to fix it if I have to.
        • encom 1y ago
          upgrade and autoremove can be combined in one command. My usual line is: apt full-upgrade -V --auto-remove --purge -V is just for verbose old/new version info.
        • Orygin 1y ago
          > A device can be woken up at silly o'clock It can't. The device is in my room and making noise when on. If that device wakes up and wakes me up, it's either getting a force shutdown (breaking the update) or getting in the trash. Plus the device is generally left in suspend mode, so shutting it down would interrupt my workflow.
  • PostOnce 1y ago
    Make sure libreoffice is included, and ublock origin. Show them how much faster it is, with fewer ads, and no subscription to Microsoft required just to write a document. The business customers might want to know that databases are a lot cheaper on Linux, especially for small business. Literally spoke to an automation company the other week that told me "we have to delete a bunch of stuff every time the database gets near 10GB or we'll have to pay Microsoft". Plus there's no license cost for linux itself either. This stuff might not be viable for hundreds of employees in a business where MS is already entrenched, but for a small business it absolutely is a better deal.
    • gerdesj 1y ago
      You have sqlite, mariadb/mysql, postgres and more just for mostly traditional SQL. Then you have the others ... 8) It's time for change. VMware have tossed themselves off into limbo and MS seem hell bent on alienating a vast swathe of humanity with W11's requirements - weirdest A/B test ever. I'm working on some bigger clients ...
    • trinsic2 1y ago
      Yeah. I just tried LibreWolf recently and it comes with Ublock preinstalled. I think I am going to install that with some relaxed privacy settings. Libreoffice by default for sure.
    • zrobotics 1y ago
      I wouldn't recommend deploying ublock on customer machines. Or at least ask what their workflow is first. There are a ton of SaaS sites that break with ad locking enabled. I run firefox+UBO+privacy badger on my machines, and the only sites I've had to disable my privacy extensions in the last few years for were work related, B2B SaaS apps. A few years ago I pushed UBO to user machines (Chrome on win10) at work, and had a ton of user issues. I finally had to disable it, it wasn't a net benefit to us. It's not just a 'turn it on and leave it alone' thing, and people don't always think or remember to try toggling it off and reloading the page when they encounter issues. That said, it's insane to me to be paying MS for a database with a 10GB limit, but I've seen their price lists. I've also worked with small businesses that don't have in-house IT, and they just end up overpaying for crappy service for many of those things. I hope this win11 migration causes more MSPs and consultants to move small businesses over to linux though, MS has been predatory on pricing for business customers for far too long and with as much work has migrated to a browser there will be way less issues switching than there were years ago.
  • heavyset_go 1y ago
    If you're going to do this, set them up with something they can get commercial support for. IMO, if a user's needs can be met with a Chromebook, Linux + a browser + email + Zoom/or whatever would suit them well. I think you're going to have a hard sell if they rely on Office or other Windows-only software, and although well meaning, it might be doing them a disservice if they can't run the software they're accustomed to.
    • weq 1y ago
      > something something Chromebook something something Why wait for mass survellience and remote attesention when u can have it today!!! :D
    • trinsic2 1y ago
      Yeah I was thinking of ZoroOS. The have a pro package.
    • tharmas 1y ago
      Wine to run Office on Linux?
      • heavyset_go 1y ago
        Only old versions of Office work on Wine, unfortunately
        • jimbob45 1y ago
          Office 2007 was the peak and it’s been all downhill since then.
    • somenameforme 1y ago
      What are the arguments for Office at the small business or individual level, as opposed to Libre Office? For most users, they'll be able to reacclimate in a matter of hours to near 100% competence. And they now are in an ecosystem that won't constantly try to squeeze you for rent. I think this is even more true in the era of LLMs, because on the rare difference somebody might get hung up on - there's no longer real need for support. LLMs absolutely excel at questions like 'In MS Office I can do [x] to achieve [y]. How do I do that in Libre Office?'
  • jmholla 1y ago
    I thought I heard that TurboTax is moving to web only, but maybe that's only for personal use and not corporate?
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • edg5000 1y ago
    The Snap store on Ubuntu is quite good. Has Spotify, VS code, Blender, Chromium. LibreOffice has a tabbed UI setting that mimics Office (easy to enable). Personally I love LibreOffice, something about it resonates with me. Everybody who liked office 2003 and could never get used to the newer weird ribbon UI in Office will love the default LibreOffice. Those who love the ribbon can enable the tabbed UI bar in LibreOffice. Only complaint is that performance is not as fluid as it could be. I avoid snap myself because I use apt, but apt is a hard sell and arguably not ideal as well. E.g. I added Spotify repos which in theory could break other packages. In practice this doesn't happen (probably due to Ubuntu essentially freezing major versions for packages in their releases).
  • morshu9001 1y ago
    The article lists 4 Linux distros. I think the most important thing is to recommend just one distro, DE, window server combo, don't know which one but it has to be carefully thought out. They're all coming from the same thing. The Linux choice matrix is confusing even for programmers. Like I can understand the pieces in theory, but in practice with hardware, user-installed software, varying degrees of compatibility between components, and updates...
  • hn111 1y ago
    Perhaps https://zorin.com/os/ https://zorin.com/os/ might be a nice distro for your customers. It has 2 UI options: one that is close to macOS and one that looks more like Windows.
  • cess11 1y ago
    If it makes their decision makers fuzzy in the stomach to pay for a suite of office software, consider SoftMaker. Create a 'showroom', virtual through network screen sharing or physical if possible. Demo machines where you can let customers get a bit of immediate experience with GNOME, Xfce and possibly something more. You can walk them through checking their email, creating a document and doing a bit of web browsing. Don't front 'Linux', it's a tainted word that is of no use to typical public sector and small to medium business people, preferably don't mention it. Instead talk about your solutions being secure, cheap, enterprise grade, customisable, long term supported, things like that.
  • npteljes 1y ago
    For office software, consider ONLYOFFICE. Free software, and it uses Microsoft file formats by default, and has a pretty good compatibility with it.
• ivraatiems 1y ago
  I think describing TPM and Secure Boot as "artificial limitations" is unfair. Many Linux distros have no problem working with both of these and they serve a valuable purpose. The problem is not that they exist or that Windows 11 supports them. It's that Microsoft pretends they are required, when they are not.
  • ericol 1y ago
    > It's that Microsoft pretends they are required I think that's what "artificial limitations" mean. Microsoft pretending they are required when they are not.
  • trinsic2 1y ago
    I hear you, but I don't really think its needed. IMHO, those features are being used to take away control of hardware you bought and paid for. If you want to add better security to a computer make it opt-in and not expect people to use it who don't need it.
  • ants_everywhere 1y ago
    I don't use Windows and actually find it kind of insane when I use someone else's computer to see what Windows is like... But it's kind of MSFT's choice whether TPM and secure boot are requirements for their software. If their software makes security assumptions that the OS has access to trusted hardware then it's a requirement. One could argue that they should create secure and less secure versions of Windows, but I don't think anyone is really going to take that seriously beyond rhetoric. There are a lot of advantages to assuming the hardware is mildly trustworthy. The downside is you may not want Microsoft to be controlling what counts as trusted on your machine. If so, then you probably don't want MSFT to have root in your machine either and you're better off with a different OS.
    • sciencejerk 1y ago
      I'm no MS fanboy, but don't you think Content Platforms like Netflix or Steam might be applying DRM pressure to Microsoft? And perhaps IP owners also apply pressure to the Content Providers to lock down their platforms, which may include hardware that has access to protected IP
• grebc 1y ago
  I switched my at home setup to MX Linux just in the last 2 months for dissatisfaction with even Win10. Win11 is a hard no, I’m keeping a laptop with Win10 for the small amount of games I play. I will likely even try WINE for them soon but just haven’t got around to it.
  • IlikeKitties 1y ago
    Try proton from valve. Every game that's not bound by kernel level anticheat pretty much works. ProtonDB is the place to get the required magic incantations for edge cases.
  • linuxftw 1y ago
    Steam Flatpak works great if your games are on Steam.
    • chrneu 1y ago
      [dead]
• apple4ever 1y ago
  I think it's a good plan, though there might be some pain. I have a bog standard AMD graphics card that does not work in Linux. I've tried multiple distributions and version in those distributions and both the Linux and AMD drivers. It just randomly flashes. Where do I go to get help? Who knows?
  • trenchpilgrim 1y ago
    What card is it? If it's older than Volcanic Islands (2015), yeah, those old cards aren't well supported by the current amdgpu driver, so you'd need to use a distribution that still supports the old ati driver. The linked article recommends MX Linux for old machines. I think you can get it working with Arch Linux but that would require a higher level of effort.
    • apple4ever 1y ago
      I got it last year. It's a Radeon RX 6600.
  • trinsic2 1y ago
    upgrade your graphics card or try another? is it old with limited support? I hear you though, I still have printing problems with my Epson WF printer.
    • apple4ever 1y ago
      I just got it last year! Should totally still be supported.
  • heavyset_go 1y ago
    I wouldn't expect users to do this, but have you filed a bug on kernel.org for the amdgpu driver? AMD's kernel developers are incredibly responsive there, I've worked with them to fix a bunch of bugs I've run into.
    • apple4ever 1y ago
• Terr_ 1y ago
  I know this isn't Stackoverflow, but... Does anyone have a good mental model for disentangling the issues of full-disk encryption versus secure-boot? I've been badly procrastinating with my desktop's new SSD because of it. Use-case is: * Dual-boot where I choose in BIOS/UEFI to go to either the existing Win10 drive or new Linux drive. * I don't need unattended boot at all, I'd rather enter a passphrase every time. * Resistance to evil-maid attacks is nice but not top-priority compared to theft. * I want to be able to take my drive out of a dead computer and access it elsewhere if something goes wrong, as opposed to needing to reformat and reload from backups. * If I install a distro with secure-boot off, can I turn it on later for benefits, or vice-versa?
  • cyberax 1y ago
    You can turn the secure boot on/off at any time. The only effect from this is the loss of encryption keys that you might have bound to the measured values. So for it to be effective against the evil maid, you really need to bind the LUKS key to it. But you can do that _and_ set a strong PIN for your LUKS key.
    • Terr_ 1y ago
      Thanks, here's my current model: 1. Your data on the drive/partition is encrypted by $BIGKEY, which basically never changes because that would require redoing everything. 2. The LUKS header stores one-or-more encrypted versions of $BIGKEY, generally encrypted using a more convenient $SMALLKEY that a human could memorize. Optionally, $PIN can also be part of the encryption step. 3. Unlike $BIGKEY, the $SMALLKEY and/or $PIN can be changed over time. This changes the ciphertext of $BIGKEY and rewrites the LUKS header. 4. Optionally, secure boot is capable of storing and retrieving $SMALLKEY into system chips in such a way that most tampering ought to destroy $SMALLKEY. > So for [Secure Boot] to be effective against the evil maid, you really need to bind the LUKS key to it. If my $SMALLKEY is not stored inside the secure-boot chips, I can see how that would be inconvenient, but I'm not sure how that is safer. Is it because the route $SMALLKEY automatically travels bypasses tricks like a hardware keylogger?
  • slicktux 1y ago
• st3fan 1y ago
  Huge opportunity for Apple too.
  • SoftTalker 1y ago
    Apple has never really tried to compete for the corporate desktop. It’s too low margin for them.
    • bigyabai 1y ago
      This. Google and Microsoft are the two juggernauts in this arena, Apple products live on the periphery of the corporate cloud ecosystem.
      • 3eb7988a1663 1y ago
        Based on the corporate IT emails I receive from time to time, it also sounds like Apple enterprise management controls are weak to non-existent. A few times a year, there is a blast sent out to not upgrade your corporate iphone/mac because of some incompatibility. In the Windows world, IT would just hold back the patch without requiring N users to do the right thing.
        • SoftTalker 1y ago
          This is true. Anyone who needs to manage Apple devices in a corporate IT setting is probably using Jamf.
  • WheatMillington 1y ago
    If the issue is the OS vendor having too much say in what hardware you can use, it's hard to understand what the opportunity is for Apple.
  • NexRebular 1y ago
    for *BSD and illumos too
• linuxftw 1y ago
  Thanks for fighting the good fight. My chief concern is that you will alienate some of your customers because normies think privacy is for crackpots. I don't have any experience being in small business computer repair, but just my feeling as a neutral 3rd party. Try to identify the problems the customers have. If privacy isn't one of their concerns, convincing them to switch PC OS is not a great fit on that basis.
  • trinsic2 1y ago
    Good point. Thanks. Your right I think I will create some eval questions and make sure I am putting the customers needs first. I feel like there needs to be some way to explain the changes to Windows 11 as hostile from a longevity perspective with the ads and the lock-in.. With one-drive being activated and moving customer data to the cloud without consent, the LLM that gets in the way of the user experience, recall, ect. It would still be their choice but at least they would know what they were getting into.. I feel like id be doing some justice by letting customers who qualify (who don't have use-cases that Linux cannot handle) know that its a better experience because Microsoft is creating friction in the desktop experience now..
  • pessimizer 1y ago
    Normies don't think privacy is for crackpots, that's a meme among techies who are trying to justify surveilling their users. Normies desperately want privacy, but think it is too hard to do, they're too dumb to figure it out, even if they figure it out it still won't really work, and that they won't be able to use stuff that they don't want to live without. They are often right, because they are smarter than they think and the industry is working against them full-time. A lot of people's incomes (on this very site) depend on keeping normies ignorant.
• tartoran 1y ago
  I have Win10 on a laptop that I use and am thinking of either taking it an offline completely (and keep on win10 forever on it) or upgrade it to Linux but am not sure if it's worth the hassle upgrading a $200 Thinkpad Carbon x1, I may as well get another one and leave this one as is. I still own a laptop with Windows 7 that when I turn on, that is quite rarely, but when I do I am hit by wave of nostalgia. This win10 machine, I wish I could extend its operation as I am pleased with how it operates in its current form but I guess it's not possible. One thing I'm certain of, I will not upgrade it to Windows 11 and Microsoft and I as a user will part ways.
  • xarope 1y ago
    go for it (upgrade to linux). My T480s is still my goto laptop when I'm travelling (if I lose it, no biggie - encrypted home dir, meanwhile it can last for 5-7 hours playing videos, running webapps etc), versus my work laptop on windows 11 dying after 2+ hours.
  • amatecha 1y ago
    Install Linux or BSD on that thinkpad and you're good to go. I still use ThinkPad X230's and T480/A485's every day, with Linux and BSD.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• taspeotis 1y ago
  > I'm recomming my customers switch to Linux rather that Upgrade to Windows 11 (scottrlarson.com) But of a bait and switch from that to the actual article title… > Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state If nothing else adhering to HN’s guideline on titles would have saved me having to suffer through reading “recomming.”
  • tom_ 1y ago
    [flagged]
  • trinsic2 1y ago
    sorry about that. was trying to clarify the reason for the switch for hacker-news audience.
• neilv 1y ago
  In addition to the good distro options mentioned, there's also Debian Stable: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/debian-13.1.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/d... There are several options for desktop environment, and you can select which ones to install when you boot that installer image (and also add/subtract more later, and change your preference at login time). One of the nicest-looking ones that should be self-explanatory to use (for anyone who's used any version of Microsoft Windows since 95) is Cinnamon. Most of other desktop environments default to similar, except for the current default Gnome one, which is a bit more creative in a way that's not intuitive.
  • amanzi 1y ago
    I use Debian Stable + Gnome as my main PC. I use a handful of native apps which are all available on Linux, and most other apps are web-based. I never used to like the Gnome desktop, but modern Gnome is fast, unbloated, and it gets out of your way.
    • neilv 1y ago
      The author spoke of migrating Windows users, so I suggested what would be familiar to them. The Cinnamon desktop will use a lot of that Gnome stuff, but things like a start menu and task bar will be more familiar than the corresponding elements of the default Gnome desktop.
  • aitchnyu 1y ago
    With my last PC, I was looking at Freedesktop issues and waiting for cutting edge software for a year to get complete support for my hardware. Hence Ubuntu and Fedora.
    • chupasaurus 1y ago
      Ubuntu is as good as Debian Sid for cutting edge (not really), PPAs work in both.
• pizlonator 1y ago
  I've been living on an Unbuntu variant (Pop_OS) for over a year now and it's surprisingly good. Note that I had been a Mac-and-some-Windows user as far as desktops go for about 10 years prior to that, and had lots of Linux experience before that - so I'm experiencing a 10 year before-and-after. Things that intrigue me: - For photos, darktable is surprisingly good. I think this was my biggest single surprise, being a Lightroom user. - GIMP was always great and now it's even better. - LibreOffice is good enough that I can live on it just fine. I do miss Keynote, but it's not a showstopper. - Dia is good enough for diagrams, though I miss OmniGraffle. - Notice how there aren't any Windows apps I miss. There are Mac apps I miss (Keynote and OmniGraffle). - Anything involving the web just works. - Suspend/resume on my Linux laptop works better than suspend/resume on Windows, but not as good as what you get on Apple M hardware. - Battery life on my Linux laptop is better than on Windows, almost entirely because Windows wakes the laptop up while it's suspended, so if you close the Windows laptop and carry it around unplugged, you'll find that the battery is totally drained after some number of hours. Linux doesn't have this problem. - Development workflow is amazing. I'd rather program on Linux than anything else. - The lack of crapware and nagware is so amazing.
  • d3Xt3r 1y ago
    - For diagrams, draw.io is a decent alternative - Similarly for Photoshop users, Photopea might suit them better than GIMP. And there's also Photoshop Express/Online if they really want to stay in the Adobe ecosystem.
    • tombert 1y ago
      Draw.io is my go-to tool on any platform now. I did an entire bachelors and masters using it for all my diagrams. I like OmniGraffle but personally I didn't think it was worth it when draw.io was free anyway. Like I don't feel it was $150-$250 better than draw.io, especially since it's not cross platform.
      • tcoff91 1y ago
        Have you ever tried Excalidraw? It doesn’t have as many features but with the keyboard shortcuts you can whip up diagrams so fast. It’s just so nice to draw in.
• zrobotics 1y ago
  IT & software dev for a small-midsize company. I wasn't able to finish migrating last month due to a pressing project, but we're migrating almost all of our systems at work to Linux. 90% of our user's work is done in a browser, and the other 10% is in an in-house application I wrote. That app works on Linux, since my work machine has been on Linux for years. We'll have a few macs and 2 win11 machines, but the rest are getting migrated. We're in the Google ecosystem for email, docs, and drive so I'll just deploy Chrome instead of a Libre chromium. I'd rather not troubleshoot user profile issues, and they have access to all our data anyway. Honestly, I fully expect I'll have more than a few users that don't even notice the OS change.
  • jbstack 1y ago
    Next step: escape the Google ecosystem. LibreOffice for docs (its far superior to Google Docs anyway). Syncthing for drive.
    • roboyoshi 1y ago
      Slightly disagree - while LibreOffice might be better in features, the UI/UX of Google Docs worked so much better for me, it's not even funny.
      • jbstack 1y ago
        I guess I kind of agree with your disagree, but disagree overall! The UI in LibreOffice feels quite clunky and outdated and never seems to have been given any thought since the OpenOffice days. But Google Docs is so feature poor that I'd rather live with LibreOffice's UI. Especially as you can adjust to the latter after using the software for a while.
        • timbit42 1y ago
          Have you tried LibreOffice's ribbon interface? It is similar to the one on Microsoft Office. You go to View > User Interface and choose "Tabbed". There are 7 different variants available.
• thevillagechief 1y ago
  Funny seeing this here at the exact moment my frustration has boiled over with windows. I'm just completely baffled at the hostility and disdain Microsoft is showing it's customers. These issues are on top of just the disregard that people actually use these products for work and business so force-updating and breaking them so often, just so they can re-force you to accept their surveillance bloatware. My feeling today has been that we're going to look back at this moment as the straw that broke the camel's back.
  • csomar 1y ago
    The camel's back is already broken, it just so happens that changing OSs is very hard. MSFT has a leak; once they lose a customer, and that customer has figured out alternatives, they are never getting them back. See this for all OSs/platforms: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share#monthly-200901-202509 https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share#monthly-200901-20... See this for Desktop OSs: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide#monthly-200901-202509 https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide... They are on a slow death spiral. Their solution to raise revenue when their marketshare goes down is to squeeze harder. So they lose more users and the vicious cycle continues. In 10-15 years, they'll dip below 50% of marketshare, at which point there will be various alternatives which will accelerate their downfall. This already happened in tablets/phones. It might also happen faster since they have a stronghold in Asia and China is now looking to accelerate the building of alternatives.
    • chrneu 1y ago
      [dead]
• elevation 1y ago
  A number of customers are leaving Windows for Linux ahead of Windows 11. To support them, we had to offer a linux equivalent for a bunch of C# .NET desktop apps. After evaluating a lot of options, pyQT + nuitka gave a reliable cross-platform result (can target distros based on Debian and Enterprise Linux easily.) And we are still able to target Windows for the customers that remain there.
  • neonsunset 1y ago
    Avalonia would have been a far, far better option.
    • elevation 1y ago
      We evaluated a ton of options, I'm not sure how Avalonia didn't make the list. Thanks for the tip!
      • neonsunset 1y ago
        Perhaps wasn't available at the time? It has remained relatively little known to teams that lived comfortably within WPF for years, luckily it's changing. .NET's GUI situation is a mess but Avalonia and Uno make it quite saner.
• repiret 1y ago
  I agree with all of the articles points except for the first one: TPM and Secure Boot do not reduce user choice or promote state or corporate surveillance. If you want to be able to prevent root kits you need secure boot, and if you want to store secrets that don't need a user password to unlock and can't be stolen by taking apart the computer, you need a TPM; or you need substantially similar alternatives. I would say that specifically with Secure Boot, Microsoft actually promoted user choice: A Windows Logo compliant PC needs to have Microsoft's root of trust installed by default. Microsoft could have stopped there, but they didn't. A Windows Logo compliant PC _also_ needs a way for users to install their own root of trust. Microsoft didn't need to add that requirement. Sure, there are large corporate and government buyers that would insist on that, but they could convince (without loss of generality) Dell to offer it to them. Instead, Microsoft said all PCs need it, and as a result, anybody who wants to take advantage of secure boot can do so if they go through the bother of installing their own root of trust and signing their boot image.
  • IlikeKitties 1y ago
    You are 100% correct and we can see the situation on phones where you can't boot anything not approved by the vendor.
  • trinsic2 1y ago
    I think it has the potential to create that situation if those features ever change. I should probably update that language, but I still feel from a consumer choice perspective, those solutions seem vendor specific and not governed by an open organization.
  • AstralStorm 1y ago
    Thing is, because the whole design is closed as well as firmware, the security of it is near zero, even for sealing firmware device images (e.g. option ROM), much less bootloaders. Multiple security holes have been found. There's no issue booting a boot rootkit with the standard Windows bootloader unless you manually seal the image with command line or group policy, and even then it's possible to bypass by installing a fresh bootloader because the images are identical and will boot after a wipe.
• 1over137 1y ago
  Where I work, I'd love to move our remaining Windows boxes to linux, but there's often software that only works on Windows. How well does Wine work these days? Can they run CAD software for example?
  • SoftTalker 1y ago
    It’s often more a question of “will the vendor support it” than “can it run.”
    • 1over137 1y ago
      Vendor support is mostly useless at the best of times. I'm more interested in 'can it run'.
  • zrobotics 1y ago
    CAD machines are some of the few in our company that are staying windows instead of going to Linux. We're an autodesk shop, I tested fusion under Debian 6 months ago and it didn't work very well. I tried proton and wine, couldn't get either to work great and had issues. It would launch, but opening a medium complexity assembly was laggy, and the CAM module would crash fairly often. I can't speak for other programs from personal experience though. That said, for home use freecad has gotten a lot better after the ondsel changes were merged, I was using the free liscence of fusion360 for personal projects, and moved over to freecad 6 months ago. I'd originally tried it 7 or 8 years ago, and it was just absolutely awful to use, but modern versions are really very good. There wasn't a huge learning curve, and I haven't run into anything that the program can't do. For hobby CAD, I'm using it for 3d printing, a Cnc mill, and making prints for manual machining. Honestly, I've been less frustrated with freecad than fusion360, it does a better job of getting out of my way and letting me design things. That said, I'm a software dev and IT guy, I don't know if it would work for commercial use. I certainly didn't push for the engineers to change, but their workstations are already running win11 that I had to debloat.
  • heavyset_go 1y ago
    Here's a list of CAD application and their ratings on AppDB: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=category&iId=59&sAction=view&sTitle=Browse+Applications https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=category&i...
• donatj 1y ago
  They want to try to force me to buy a new PC? In this economy? I'm using Ubuntu as my daily driver for the first time since ~2010, and I'm solidly not hating it. Thinking about other desktop environments and what not, but this was easy and familiar. Everything literally just worked... Which is the first for me with Linux.
• billy99k 1y ago
  I've been using Linux since the early 2000s. I've never been able to completely switch over from Windows or Mac. One issue I've always had is when updating applications you use every day, one bad library could make the application unusable. Most are a dependency nightmares and there just aren't enough people paid to work on Linux apps to offer good support. When I was young and poor, I had all the time in the world to tinker with my Linux machine to figure to get everything working again. I just want an operating system to work. If not Windows, I would recommend a Mac.
  • d3Xt3r 1y ago
    > One issue I've always had is when updating applications you use every day, one bad library could make the application unusable. Most are a dependency nightmares and there just aren't enough people paid to work on Linux apps to offer good support. That's not really a problem anymore with immutable/atomic distros. Your entire system is upgraded in one go as a single image, any dependency issues are handled on the server (basically the image won't get built if there are issues). And most of your user apps will be installed via Flatpak or other means (homebrew/Nix etc) so you won't ever have to suffer from dependency issues unlike regular distros. So if you want to get a distro that "just works", get an immutable+atomic distro (eg Aurora, Bazzite etc). Assuming of course, you've got compatible hardware.
    • billy99k 1y ago
      It's not with Windows or Mac.
• orionblastar 1y ago
  I had a small business in 1995. We offered Slackware Linux for free and provided free training and installation for clients who wanted to try it. When Windows 95 came out, I had a 486DX 50Mhz system that booted Windows 95 and Linux, and Linux was more stable than Windows 95. Linux was also better than OS/2, but it didn't run DOS and Windows programs in Linux yet. Those who chose Linux were happy with the choice. But they were only a minority. Now, Windows 11 requirements make a lot of PCs obsolete unless they install Linux on them.
• __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  I may recommended the same for my parents. 20 years ago Ubuntu was the go-to for baby's first Linux. Is that still the case?
  • reassess_blind 1y ago
    Probably Linux Mint these days.
    • theflyinghorse 1y ago
      Mint is great! I've been using it for years, everything just works out of the box
  • d3Xt3r 1y ago
    Ubuntu has unfortunately become the Windows of the Linux world - and I don't mean that in a good way. Unless you want to be the perpetual IT support for your parents, I would recommend getting a user-friendly immutable/atomic distro, like Aurora[1]. Aurora uses KDE, which most Windows users would find familiar. It is immutable, which makes it very hard to break, and it uses atomic updates (basically updates either apply or don't: there's no partial state which can break the system). And in the rare event that something does break, you can boot directly to the previous version right from the boot menu, no need to run any manual rollback commands. My 70yr old mother also uses Aurora and has zero issues. [1] https://getaurora.dev/ https://getaurora.dev/
    • heavyset_go 1y ago
      In my experience, if you aren't dealing with power users, normal people won't be able to break their Linux install. The standard permissions model stops them from doing anything stupid, and they don't know enough to be dangerous.
      • d3Xt3r 1y ago
        Thing is, regular Linux distros are most prone to breakage when it comes to updates - especially Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros[1]. My elderly mum is non-technical and has been a Linux user for the past decade, and she had Xubuntu, Mint and Zorin - all of which ran fine until update broke it (and this is just a bog standard DELL Optiplex desktop with an Intel iGPU). So I switched her to Aurora a couple of years ago and it's been rock solid. This is why I recommend immutable/atomic distros for newbies, especially if the person installing it doesn't want to be a 24x7 tech support for that user. [1] https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/02/05/done-with-ubuntu/ https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/02/05/done-with-ubuntu/
• excalibur 1y ago
  I used to run Office in Wine back in the day. Is that not a thing anymore?
  • d3Xt3r 1y ago
    You can still run older versions, but anything from 2019 onwards will struggle - and you can completely forget about the latest M365 versions. Luckily OnlyOffice is a pretty decent alternative with excellent compatibility with MSO formats. And there's also the web versions of office, which is now a decent alternative (unless you're a power user who needs macros/VBA etc).
• lutusp 1y ago
  This is an excellent article as well as a sign of the times. I wish the list of Linux choices had included Mint, which is essentially Ubuntu without Snaps. Snaps are a partly closed-source Ubuntu project that contradicts the open nature of Linux. Linux users can install the free software suite LibreOffice, which not only replaces Office but reads and writes the same file formats. Many similar choices exist, this is just one. Gamers can install the free Steam game compatibility layer on Linux, then play many of the same games they play on Windows. Meanwhile, Redmond's recent requirement that everyone sign up for a Microsoft account, and its pushing the Recall eavesdropping-to-cloud feature with no user opt-out provisions, clearly signals Microsoft's belief that their customers should't be allowed to choose. Here is a list of current Windows traits that should be options, but are out of an end-user's control: * Required Microsoft account. * User tracking and telemetry without knowledge or consent. * OneDrive, which is cloud storage and tracking, requires technical skill to disable. * Desktop-recall images to the cloud, essentially Microsoft mass surveillance. * Edge browser, cannot disable or remove. * Unintuitive user interface, out of user's control. * Advertising everywhere. All these frequently heard complaints are addressed by Linux, and Linux is free. I've been a Linux user for 30 years. I maintain one Windows dual-boot system, partly to help friends deal with Windows issues, partly to entertain myself with what most people believe constitutes a normal end-user computer experience. A bit of context -- my first computer was an Apple II in 1977, so my definition of personal computing might seem out of touch with modern times (https://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programming.php https://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programm...).
  • throwaway2037 1y ago
    > contradicts the open nature of Linux How do you feel about binary blobs required to run most WiFi cards in Linux? And, I am pretty sure that both NVidia and AMD have similar (binary blobs).
    • lutusp 1y ago
      It's a matter of choice. We have no choice about firmware drivers, but we do about which Linux distribution to install. Since there is a choice, we can exercise it and send a signal that open-source is preferred. > And, I am pretty sure that both NVidia and AMD have similar (binary blobs). Yes, all true, and as more powerful GPUs appear, this is likely to become a more contentious issue. So I say, choose where we have a choice.
• ChrisArchitect 1y ago
  Title is: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state Can you fix?
• ChrisArchitect 1y ago
  Nobody thinks this is a weird reaction to an OS update that's been out for years at this point and barely makes a difference over the previous version? There's no 'Recall'. Co-pilot isn't all over in your face so removing it isn't really a priority. Edge isn't forced on you, it's just part of the bundled software just like a bunch of other items as in every Windows for decades. Not saying it doesn't get hairy if you're going out of your way to remove them or not be in the ecosystem, but consumers don't care, and for the most part stuff isn't being forced in front of them.
  • browningstreet 1y ago
    If you’re not on the corporate managed version of Windows 11, Microsoft frequently resets the default apps related to browsing, svg, pdf etc. I had it done twice in a week recently. That’s what flipped the trigger for me and I finally abandoned Microsoft. If you’re measuring “Windows isn’t annoying” from the corporate perch, that’s not a fair comparison to what consumers and home users put up with. Not to mention the forced upgrade and reboots that can’t easily be disabled for same.
  • jimbob45 1y ago
    Every other OS from MS is garbage. XP good, Vista bad, 7 good, 8 so bad no one remembers it, 10 goodish, 11 horrific. The hate is hardly unprecedented and indeed well-deserved. MS has shown in the past that they’ll respond to poor OS reception with attempts to win back customers and that’s what I’m hoping for in this case.
    • aleph_minus_one 1y ago
      > Every other OS from MS is garbage. XP good, Vista bad, 7 good, 8 so bad no one remembers it, 10 goodish, 11 horrific. Rather: 2000: good XP: decent (after a long series of patches) Vista: bad 7: good 8: horrific 10: bad (basically all the people hated it because of the surveillance stuff) 11: horrific
  • Dylan16807 1y ago
    > been out for years Because now is the real push to get everyone off 10.
• whycome 1y ago
  “Upgrade to Linux”
• vivzkestrel 1y ago
  I have said this 10 times on HN and i ll say it again. Release a version of Windows 11 called "Windows Optinmal" that has 0 telemetry, 0 trackers, 0 bloatware that runs faster than Windows 7 on modern hardware. Charge 4x the prices if you want, I ll pay happily
  • chrneu 1y ago
    [dead]
  • fsflover 1y ago
    What if 4x is too low? How much more would you agree to pay?
    • vivzkestrel 1y ago
      good question, answer is we need to find out how much value they are getting currently and only slightly incentivize them
• socalgal2 1y ago
  I'm sure I will regret this, something will change and I'll be "F.U. Win11!". But, I'm on Windows 11 Pro (upgraded from Windows 10 Pro) and I have barely noticed a difference. Maybe because it's Windows Pro, not Home? Maybe because I have 2 profiles. The one I used to install it which required a microsoft account, and a separate, local only account which is the one I use always. I can't remember the last time I had to use the other account. Maybe when I upgraded to Windows 11. I don't remember. I'm not trying to excuse Microsoft. I had to go into settings and turn off everything I could find. I had to futs around to get it to stop trying to get me to install Exchange every time I pressed Win-E (or was it Win-W) which I press often because I use the same keyboard on Mac and Win-W is Cmd-W (open new Window) (A: Powertoys). So yea, I cursed that. But, I found a solution. Other than that, so far, it stays mostly out of my way and just works. I'm hard pressed to notice too many differences. Is it because I'm on Pro? Is it because it's a local account? Is it just luck? I don't know. It only suggests that it's at least possible, so far, to use it.
  • BLKNSLVR 1y ago
    It just sounds as if you haven't reached whatever your capacity is for "having to setup the OS to get out of your way". And that's a personal choice for everyone. Windows 10 eventually breached my capacity due to the number of defaults I had to change post installation, and then often, again, post-patch/update. This was very soon after Windows 10 was released, and I already didn't like Windows 8's hybrid monstrosity following on from the sublime Windows 7, which I consider to be peak Windows. I moved to Pop! OS and have been enjoying it on both desktop and laptop for over 5 years.
    • danparsonson 1y ago
      Forced updates were the last straw for me - after several iterations of using my machine until late, then being forced to let it update itself for another 30-60 minutes when I just wanted to switch everything off and go to bed, and noting that Proton made almost every game playable on Linux (thanks Valve).... the switch was a no-brainer.
      • 1y ago
• glaucon 1y ago
  It seems to me that he's missed Teams off his list of "where this might not work for you" situations. A lot more than half my money comes from clients who know of nothing else. I'm not pleased about this, but it's another part of their grip on their more-or-less monopoly.
  • hexbin010 1y ago
    [dead]
  • throwaway2037 1y ago
    I would also say that the desktop version of Microsoft Outlook is much better than the web app. Can you even drag and drop emails to attach them from the web app? I never tried it. (It always bothers me that I cannot do it in Gmail. Attached emails are so common in the business world.) Also: Almost all replacements for Excel are much worse, and incompatible with existing VBA macros that run a lot of HR, accounting, budgets, and other support functions. Regarding Teams desktop app vs web app: Is there a big difference? I don't have experience with the web app.
    • glaucon 1y ago
      | Regarding Teams desktop app vs web app: Is there a big difference? I don't have experience with the web app. I seem to recall : it would only work on Edge; and you couldn't share your screen in the web environment. I say "only work on Edge" but, to be fair, it's possible I may not have tried Chrome as I never use it. It didn't work on Firefox.
  • wazoox 1y ago
    Teams works in Firefox on Linux perfectly fine for me.
    • glaucon 1y ago
      Sorry, I've only just seen your response. Are you able to share your screen using FF on Linux? It's been about eighteen months since I tried so perhaps things have changed since my experience.
• tombert 1y ago
  Even if I didn't give a shit about the privacy stuff, I would like to just reiterate something I said a few days ago. My mom got an automatic update to Windows 11, and it bricked her computer. It wouldn't boot; it would spin and then say it needed to go into repair mode, and then doing repair mode didn't do anything. My initial thought was that the disk was hosed, but of course my parents had a bunch of priceless documents that were never backed up anywhere else, so I talked my dad through flashing a USB of Ubuntu so I could boot into it [1], mounted the NTFS partition, and ran smartctl and the disk wasn't reporting any errors. I found and ran a few other diagnostic commands and again, no errors. I was able to rsync the files to my home server, so nothing was loss. My initial assumption is that the Windows Update team didn't properly check to see if the CPU was compatible, and that maybe they were calling a newer instruction that wasn't on my mom's relatively old laptop. After unsuccessfully trying to convince my parents to move to Linux, I talked them through flashing a USB drive with Windows 11 with an official image from Microsoft and using Microsoft's official disk flashing software, and we were able to install Windows 11, and as far as we can tell, it worked completely fine. My hypothesis now is that whomever built Windows Update fucked up some kind of boot key and it was failing as a result. That or they just decided my mom should buy a new computer. I was actually more annoyed after Windows 11 worked perfectly fine, not just because that means my parents aren't going to move to Linux, but also because that means that there's no technical reason that the computer should have been bricked, it was just the utter incompetence of Windows Update. Just to reiterate, this wasn't some hacked version of Windows 11, this was directly downloaded from Microsoft, flashed with their tools, with no adulteration on our end, meaning regular Windows 11 works fine. I highly doubt that my mom is the only person who has gone through or will go through this, and a lot of the people that will go through this won't have kids who are software engineers and probably be forced to buy a new computer. Genuinely, how much e-waste is going to be generated by this forced update? [1] Why the hell isn't there any kind of "Live USB" version of Windows? I mean officially, not some hacked thing? Why is the best way to fix Windows to use Linux?
  • somerandomqaguy 1y ago
    There was a live USB version of windows; Windows to Go. Microsoft stopped supporting it about 6 years ago for some reason.
• amatecha 1y ago
  Yeah, I just got a msg the other day from someone who's saying "Windows 11 won't work on my computer, what should I do?" .. I'm suggesting they try Linux. All they do is browse the web and play card games. Linux has way the hell more games than Windows comes with, and it doesn't bundle ads with its games either!
  • tombert 1y ago
    It's kind of primitive but AisleRiot is my favorite solitaire application. It's simple, it's lightweight, it's either included with or easy to install into any distro. I play FreeCell on there all the time.
    • amatecha 1y ago
      nice, thanks, I'll take a look! Oh, yeah, this is absolutely perfect. Thanks again, that's amazing! It was really the only thing I wasn't sure about upfront for the person I'm thinking of. So awesome :D
    • wazoox 1y ago
      I prefer Pysol but both are free anyway ;)
• wackget 1y ago
  This will only work if the customers have a considerable amount of experience with computers already. For the vast majority of people, Linux is going to present insurmountable challenges which will only lead to serious frustration. I say this as someone who uses Linux daily. It's simply not ready for mass exposure. The second a layman wants to do anything remotely custom with it, they are going to struggle.
  • d3Xt3r 1y ago
    I think the vast majority of people use a PC for only basic functionality, like browsing the web and editing documents/spreadsheets, and for these users, Linux works fine. My 70yr old mum is a classic example of this - she used all versions of Windows from 3.1 to 7, and she switched to Linux about a decade ago and has zero issues. If my mum can use Linux, so can the average Joe. It's the power users, or users who've got specific proprietary software/hardware requirements that usually run into issues: gamers who play games with kernel-level anti-cheat, professionals who're dependent on Adobe/AutoCAD etc.
  • abdullahkhalids 1y ago
    I will hazard that the modal computer user in 2025 has never installed anything on their desktop computer. Almost everything is done through the browser these days - unfortunately.
  • chrneu 1y ago
    [dead]
• dangus 1y ago
  I really don’t like articles like these because there’s so much FUD in a well-intentioned direction but it takes it too far. Like, secure boot is not a bad feature, and I use it with Linux to enhance my security posture. It is a good thing. TPM is rather useful for encrypting your disks. Stop telling non-technical people stuff like this. The hypotheticals of a future of corporate control via TPM are completely outweighed by the importance of encrypting your data today. As of right now TPM isn’t enabling some kind of horrendous dystopian present. Maybe it will in the future but I dunno, I haven’t see it yet. And then a lot of other parts of this article are gross exaggerations of reality, and a lot of those complaints already existed with Windows 10 users anyway. Some of these were actually worse at previous points in time (e.g., it used to be way more difficult to remove OneDrive and now it just uninstalls cleanly). Windows Recall and Copoilot are entirely optional features that are very easy to disable entirely. The author is straight up lying about windows recall and the “surveillance state,” Microsoft has directly stated that it is 100% local (doesn’t even work on hardware that lacks AI processing optimizations) and no information from the feature leaves your device. It also comes with a rather extensive list of security controls and sensible defaults if you actually read the documentation. Sure, a pre-release beta version had a security issue, but that was pre-release. If we want to start claiming that Microsoft is just directly lying about things they document very specifically and directly about Windows Recall that’s a really big accusation. Windows 11 prevents complete uninstallation of features…yeah it’s an operating system, no shit. No they’re not going to let me uninstall File Explorer. Yes I know Linux lets you do that. And the complaints about edge, sure, it’s true and all, but it is again a one-time issue that goes away once you change your default browser to some other browser that also begs you to make it default. It’s a minor annoyance at worst and judging by the marketshare of chrome everyone pretty much ignored Microsoft’s pathetic pleading. Everyone pretty much sleepwalks into installing chrome anyway. Look, I say all this as a Linux user myself. There’s no need to exaggerate and lie about Windows just because we prefer Linux. I would still not recommend to most average joe windows 10 users that they should switch over to Linux, but I am recommending to more people than ever before.
  • netdevphoenix 1y ago
    > Windows Recall and Copoilot are entirely optional features that are very easy to disable entirely. And very easy for Microsoft to enable silently. Missing the point here. The fact that they are enabled by default is the concerning bit. You shouldn't need to fight against your OS or worry if the next update will do something to your system that you don't like. This is the crux of it all
• scythe 1y ago
  > Alternative for Microsoft Office: LibreOffice, This would seem to require a little elaboration. LibreOffice Calc is supposed to be decent, but I practically never hear about it being used in the professional contexts where Excel typically appears. I'd be willing to bet that it will handle all of the spreadsheets currently used at our firm, but that's a convenient case where only a small number of spreadsheets matter and I know how they all work. For anyone managing a larger ecosystem the switching cost is daunting. Some links to case studies or analyses of when Calc can take over for Excel would probably be pretty helpful, since as far as I can tell Excel is the reason people stick to Microsoft, while Outlook, Teams and Word are mostly just tolerated.
• m463 1y ago
  I should mention that ubuntu phones home a lot. I like the fact that it has done a lot for the linux ecosystem, but there are a few things: - it has a privacy policy - it forces updates - their hardwired package ubuntu-advantage-tools cannot be uninstalled without breaking the os - motd has telemetry and nags - can't disable snaps - whoopsie uploads crashes to canonical now, this is different from windows because the os is mostly open source, but it is important to know not all linux distros are the same (note that because the source is generally open, you can probably figure out how to "fix" most of these problems, but not easily and they are moving targets)
  • pixxel 1y ago
    [dead]
  • spaghetti_king 1y ago
    I'm curious what you recommend? I've used Ubuntu mostly because of it's larger community and assumed it was less painful then others but am open to switching. I have to say the endless amount of distros and small differences between them has always been daunting and something I think holds some non-technical people back.
    • npteljes 1y ago
      I started with Ubuntu back in the day, and later distro-hopped a lot, but honestly, I find the apt package manager the nicest. So I went back to Ubuntu's source: Debian. I use it with KDE. I also have a good out of the box experience with Zorin (an Ubuntu-based distro). Their goal is to be an alternative to Windows, to make the transition smoother for people coming from Windows. I wanted to test that and just installed it, never used the command line, etc. It feels nice and did everything via a graphical interface I wanted out of a desktop system. >I think holds some non-technical people back. That might seem like an issue, but what matters for adoption is what is packaged with hardware, and what gets support later. Microsoft realized this and capitalized on it big time, and that's why the de facto default PC is Windows. Microsoft took care that governments, schools use Windows and Office, that Windows comes bundled with PCs and laptops, meanwhile they took care that it all interacts at least on a basic level, but at least somewhat reliably.
• antibull 1y ago
  [dead]
• Joel_Mckay 1y ago
  In general, the Ubuntu cinnamon desktop is a good starter system. That being said, make sure to install printer, camera, and GPU drivers for new users before leaving your care (note iphone PhotoSync app also works with ssh.) Additionally, loading a suite of common Applications to replace web/email/CAD/publishing/media/gthumb/zoom tools will ease new users experience looking to complete some task. Linux workstations are easier now given most services are web or App based. MacOS also tends to be easier for the people locked into Adobe =3
• pumanoir 1y ago
  For office I'd recommend Softmaker's FreeOffice or Pro 2024. They've worked great in my linux and macs
• AdeptusAquinas 1y ago
  I've been using Windows 11 since it came out. Seems fine, no real difference over 10. Maybe a little bit faster. Some of the more annoying stuff like ads in the start menu and the like only really affect americans, as far as I know. I've never seen it. Had a brief battle turning copilot off everywhere when that became a thing - including in notepad! - but thats hardly just a microsoft thing. Don't really understand all this drama over the TPM chip, especially since you can bypass that requirement with a little effort if you can't upgrade your hardware.
  • wvenable 1y ago
    I ran a few shut-up scripts and installed StartAllBack and my machine is almost indistinguishable from Windows 7 on first glance. And it was certainly no more work than configuring Linux to my liking.
• unixhero 1y ago
  How about this, you don't need Windows. My mum runs Linux and has been for 10 years! No more support phonecalls!
  • theandrewbailey 1y ago
    Agreed! I replaced XP with Xubuntu (my preferred distro at the time) on my parent's computer about 15 years ago. I told them that "it works like Windows[0]", showed them how to check email, browse the web, play solitare, and shut down. Even the random HP printer + scanner worked great! I expected a call from them to "put it back to what it was", but it never happened. (The closest was Mom wondering why solitare (the gnome-games version) was different, then guided her on how to change the game type to klondike.) [0] If "it [Xubuntu] works like Windows" offended you, I'd like to point out that normies don't care about how operating system kernels are designed. They care about things like a start menu, and that the X in the corner closes programs.
• scaglio 1y ago
  Luckily, to replace most of the Office applications, their respective online web applications work very well. That wouldn't be a major issue in migrating to Linux.
• BatteryMountain 1y ago
  The best path forward for home users and small business for non-technical users: Install Fedora with KDE. Install Firefox, Thunderbird and Chrome. Install uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger. Install LibreOffice & bookmark Google Docs. Install multimedia support, h264/h265, VLC/mpv/ffmpeg, enable DRM in browser. Install Steam if applicable. If they have a printer, connect it and show them how to print a page. Configure & tweak KDE to be cleaner & more user friendly (its already near perfect out of the box). Show them how to manage wifi/lan connections. Stick with Intel & AMD hardware, Nvidia drivers breaks on most kernel updates (and it messes with luks/secureboot/dracut). Intel & AMD, Just Works. Educate the user on how to do Software Updates, install/remove software, how the file explorer works, maybe some terminal stuff if they seem inclined. Give them a high level overview of the benefits of linux. With Fedora and KDE you can accomplish 95% of your computering needs, including software development. Only a handful of games & creative softwares don't work. It will only take 6 months to have them permanently converted.
  • d3Xt3r 1y ago
    I would take this a step further and recommend a Fedora-based immutable distro like Bazzite (for gamers) or Aurora (for everyone else). These come with codecs and even proprietary drivers (nVidia), so you don't need to install anything manually. Immutable/atomic distros are rock solid and extremely hard to break, the automatic updates/upgrades are a godsend for newbies, and in the rare event something does break, you can boot directly into the previous version right from the boot menu - no command line wizardry required. Immutables also don't suffer from the dependency issues that can sometimes plague regular distros, so I would highly recommend them over a regular distro for most newbies.
  • Aardwolf 1y ago
    I don't have issues with Nvidia drivers in Archlinux (using cinnamon and X) after pacman updates that sometimes update kernel and/or Nvidia drivers, I'm curious what's different in your setup to get these issues Also, how are the graphics drivers affecting LUKS for you? They are two independent and unrelated things for me, Nvidia drivers aren't doing anything disk or pam related > If they have a printer, connect it and show them how to print a page. This however is the thing that doesn't "just work" for me, even with a common hp printer. The one time in a year you need to use the printer, something will have broken about its drivers again in Linux. I just transfer the pdf to the printer with a USB stick now
• WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
  Microsoft is an oligopoly that monetizes mediocrity: -unable to execute a clean chip-architecture transition (while Apple shipped three clean ones) -unable to modernize its operating system consistently (5 layers of different UI/UX and 30 years old DLLs spread all over the place) -unable to harden its own software -unable to design its own hardware -unable to keep users's data secure I could continue, but the pattern is clear I will never store personal or government issued documents on a Windows device and I will never use any form of digital ID to login on infrastructure that depends on Azure AD TPM, Secure Boot, Windows Update stories are the evidence that the more you entrust Microsoft, the worse it gets
• gethly 1y ago
  I have been using windows since version 95. I even liked the Millennium version, that was most hated before Vista. I tried Linux several times, but Windows just always worked and Linux usually had always some issues(mostly drivers, lack of good programs and no gaming). But now, after more than two decades, I am certain Windows 10 is my last Windows. Nothing lasts for ever, not even Microsoft's domination on personal computers. It took them decades, but now they finally f'd up so bad that there is just no going back. I think, like many people, it will take me few years to need to reinstall my computer(or get a new one). So I will still be a Windows user and that will skew the numbers for upcoming years. But I think that also means that in 1-5 years, Microsoft will see a massive double digit percentage drop of users, almost over night, and nobody will have a clue what is going on. By then, I bet the distributions will be even better. The gaming will be event better. The drivers will be even better. The saturation will be even better. So the transition will be even more seamless than it is today. I am looking forward to it. I think Linux, or open source and free OS, should have been the norm. But we took a bad turn in the past and got hijacked by few smart people. That will come to a natural end, finally.
  • OvbiousError 1y ago
    Gaming on linux has been awesome for years. With the advent of systems like bazzite, the transition is only getting easier.
    • 4ggr0 1y ago
      +1, switched to Bazzite about three weeks ago. I did have to dualboot a Windows after a couple of days, unfortunately. Mostly related to Anti-Cheat and other shitty measures. Dark Souls II did not want to recognize my Controller, even though it works fine in every other game. Skate can't be played on Linux because of Anti-Cheat, but fuck EA anyways. Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, Dishonored 2 and Death to the Outsider and Bioshock worked fine. Did have to tinker with the graphics settings a bit and the experience is definitely buggier than on Windows, but the huge upside is that I don't have to use Windows anymore, or at least just as a fallback-option. I know care 0 about the Windows, it's on a separate SSD, haven't even set a Wallpaper or other things, which is rare for me.
• pjmlp 1y ago
  Another "everyone will migrate in droves to Linux" article that keeps poping up a Windows version ends, since Windows XP days, yet even Valve was forced to translate Win32 APIs to actually have games for the Steam Deck, after how Steam Machines went down. General public won't care until they can buy laptops with GNU/Linux on their favourite shopping mall PC store. As it stands today they are more likely to buy an iPad or Android tablet than such alternative, which aren't much better than Microsoft in user tracking, and much worse in user freedom allowed by the OS.
  • chrneu 1y ago
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  • bigyabai 1y ago
    > yet even Valve was forced to translate Win32 APIs to actually have games for the Steam Deck Yeh, and it works great. Your point? The Steam Deck hardware itself can run the original 32-bit libraries if your distro supports it, Valve wasn't "forced" to do anything. They chose WoW64 because it's the mature and functional solution.
• dcanelhas 1y ago
  I wish there was an active dev community that could patch win10 going forward, but without access to source code for the kernel, perhaps that isn't really viable. Ideally I would want to use Linux but I also want to play games that are only supported on windows. Does using WSL help or is an outdated windows base still going to be the weakest link in the security onion?
  • d3Xt3r 1y ago
    WSL is unfortunately is less than ideal, not only is it rubbish (it has its own set of issues like weird networking bugs), it also doesn't mitigate any of the security vulnerabilities/bloatware/telemetry/bugs etc present in Windows. But you can always dual-boot between Windows and Linux. Just uninstall all your browsers (to mitigate risk) and other non-essential app in your Windows install, configure the firewall to block everything except games. And boot into Linux for everything else.
    • WorldMaker 1y ago
      > (it has its own set of issues like weird networking bugs) WSL2 is mostly just a virtual machine. All of its networking bugs aren't that weird, they are pretty common networking issues you'd see from any other virtual machine configuration. Depending on what you are trying to do, switching WSL2's networking mode to "Mirrored" can be a useful way to fix networking issues by more closely aligning the VM network stack with the host network stack. This is often the fix for VM networking issues in other environments, too. Things like the host's VPN get reused directly instead of the VM needing to run its own VPN copy, for instance.
  • WorldMaker 1y ago
    WSL is effectively a virtual machine. The weakest link is still going to be the virtual machine host (Windows).
  • npteljes 1y ago
    In case you want to hold on to Win 10, you can use their LTSC version + validate with massgrave / your own activation emulator. Win 10 21H2 IoT (LTS) end of life is 13 Jan 2032. You would have 7 years to figure out where to go from there, maybe straight to Windows 12.
• jeisc 1y ago
  Will a person without a personal device still be considered a person?
  • npteljes 1y ago
    I don't know what Microsoft considers me, but it definitely felt bad.
• 2d8a875f-39a2-4 1y ago
  Echoing a lot of users ITT, Windows has been good to me but the enshittification has reached what feels like the end point. Windows value to me was "everything just worked". But that's no longer the case now, unless you are willing to walk down Microsoft's centralized rails. Need an MS Account and OneDrive... need expensive modern hardware... get ads and crapware... get telemetry and data exfiltration. The effort of working around all that is non trivial. EDIT: and if I was ok with all that stuff I'd already by captured by Apple. If I have to fuck around with something in my home OS, that OS might as well be Linux. So now I am compiling wifi and printer drivers from github (FFS Linux!) instead of disabling telemetry and hacking an install with local accounts only. The challenge, as always, is going to be taking the family with me.
• realaaa 1y ago
  maybe 2026 is finally going to be that long awaited Year of Linux :) long overdue!
• buyucu 1y ago
  Just use Linux. It is easy.
• johnnienaked 1y ago
  The fact Linux has like a zillion iterations and is all open source and free just proves companies like Microsoft are gangsters. They got to the hill first and now they sit on top with a gun.
• Havoc 1y ago
  A switch is viable for technical users but I’d still not be comfortable recommending it for family members. It’s still a bridge too far for most The hardware landfill issue is real though. My 70 year old dad announced he’s getting a new laptop out of the blue. Reason…this
• tmaly 1y ago
  I am still on Windows 10. The secure book on my bios doesn't seem to work and so I can't upgrade to Windows 11 yet.
• mikewarot 1y ago
  I just wish Genode was ready to be my daily driver. 8( Linux isn't going to be any more secure than Windows was if everyone switches to it.
• HeavyStorm 1y ago
  There's a lot of conspiracy in the article subtext. It's my own opinion that windows enforcement of TPM while retiring Windows 10 is a rough direction, but I also get the executive decision. Support for old software is costly, and Windows 10 is very old at this point. Add that to how many security issues Microsoft has been having, and this seems like the only sensible decision.
• BeachGuy007 1y ago
  You didn't mention Linux Mint which is the number 1 alternative. I think the whole Microsoft/Google etc. hype is way overblown.
• JamesAdir 1y ago
  > The AI tool Co-pilot is installed and enabled without consent. Removal is difficult or nonexistent. As much as I agree with the article's general tone, uninstalling Copilot is actually quite straightforward and easy.
• kellysantino 1y ago
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