I can only hope that nothing ever happens to where I'd have to use Windows again. (been using only linux for over 10 years and the latest Windows I ever used was win 7 at work).
If that happened, the shock of all the last 10-15 years' accumulation of enshittification hitting me at once might give me a stroke. The boiling frogs of today have gotten used to their OS serving them ads and spying on them by now, but I wouldn't be able to deal with it.
I dual boot at work, which in practice means I have a Linux laptop with a Windows partition for occasional use.
It’s windows 10, not 11, and the machine has decent specs: 6c/12t, 32 GB ram, and an SSD. Windows feels legitimately clunky and slow to me when I use it, and I am not using some lightweight Linux distro meant to be blazing fast. I run Mint Cinnamon which is as mainstream and all-in-one as it gets. But it still feels like it was created to serve the user rather than third party business interests.
I have some desktop machines at home that run windows 10 as well, which I use pretty infrequently. One of my winter projects is going to be fixing that. The OS part anyway.
Exactly the same setup and experience here. Work forces me to use an inferior application in windows instead of a more powerful option in Linux and it boils my blood.
Any chance you could use that Windows app in a VM, or is Windows itself a mandate too?
Before we got the green light to dual boot, I spent 90% of my time using Linux in a VM while windows basically handled my M365 applications. These days I much prefer having Teams and Outlook being tabs in Firefox!
That kinda did the trick for me since my old PC was starting to struggle with some tasks, so I went and built a new PC recently.
Joke's on Microsoft though, I installed Arch Linux on it instead. It's so much less work to maintain compared to Windows these days.
A relative of mine had also got fed up with the Windows BS and was interested in what I was running, so I got her machine dual booted with Debian now to try it out. She hasn't looked back either, so that to me proves that Linux is ready for non-techies.
My GF is not technical and had an old, old laptop that barely ran, so I gave her an Ubuntu USB drive and helped her boot from it, but she did the install all on her own. She even fixed a printer driver issue by doing some research and installing an updated driver.
But that just goes to show that Linux isn't exactly hard if you know how to read.
Yes. Go buy a new computer.
Then give me your old computer so I can put linux on it and distribute it for free to students and immigrants.
I like how almost everything we do now is in response to things going to shit.
Lemmy - Reddit went to shit
Linux (Desktop, anyway) - Windows went to shit
Piracy - Distribution and pricing went to shit
Jellyfin - Plex went to shit
Emulation - Nintendo, mostly...
Matrix - Just in case Signal tries anything... switchblade
Monopoly was originally the Landlord's Game and was designed to teach children the dangers of unchecked monopolies and growth in the concentration of wealth.
Software and by extension, software companies are subject to those same Iron Laws of Oligarchy.
Given enough time, everything turns to shit, and it's up to younger, healthy, energized people to fight back the power creep.
Got that the other day on my gaming computer. Very irritating.
Especially since I bought the computer in 2021 specifically to run the virtual cycling program Zwift. I'm not replacing it just to placate Microsoft. It's more than powerful enough to run Zwift and will be for years. I'm hoping the options for using Zwift on Linux pan out.
It looks like the authors themselves are also interested!
https://zwiftinsider.com/zwift-on-linux/
This is interesting, I might give the application a try myself
Zwiftinsider isn't run by Zwift - he just reports on them (though he definitely has inside information, and they work with him on various things, like letting him use "bots" to test various functionalities).
That is pretty old. I think there are several approaches now. The one he lists, one using docker (I actually had it running on my desktop Linux machine, but I didn't actually test it), and I think some people got it working under WINE.
Zwift's saving grace is that you can connect most hardware via your phone - trainer, cadence, heart rate monitor, etc. - because it's designed to also run on things like Apple TVs, iPads, and Android phones and tablets, albeit with probably lower graphics settings. So, you don't need to worry about the hardware end of it (ANT+ dongle), which very much simplifies the issue. Which reminds me, my heart rate monitor is ANT+ only, and I'd need a bluetooth-capable one to do this.
(Also, at worst, I could run it on my tablet and hook that up to a monitor, so even if I can't get it running on Linux, I still have options.)
Maybe it is time for a new LINUX PC.
Or a new Linux install on your existing PC.
Some group who hates Microsoft should just start doing their own unofficial security updates for 10 and slowly turn it into a Linux distro
"We and our 855 partners blah blah blah."
Odd that theverge decided to post this article. Not too stoked about 850 companies asking for my data in order to see an article about predatory business practices.
Even more irritating is when they give you the option to opt out, but you have to select every company individually. So you either give up on the article or let them steal your life.
Ah yes, there isn't even an option to permanently disable this popup, only remind me later. When the operating system is the nag ware.
`
Those "remind me later" options should be illegal
Then again, just install Linux already and you don't ever have to deal with any of this shit.
Yknow sometimes it'll cross my mind that this is a farce, that really it can't be that bad. But then I remember the backlash when windows 7 started doing online checks, and why I switched my computer before 11 was released. And I try to remember the last time my PC annoyed the shit out of me.. yeah since I had windows.
I convinced my wife to dual booting Linux Mint. She uses it every now and then, but she primarily still uses Windows 10. I hope she will abandon it once she sees this. She absolutely detests ads of any kind.
Just get rid of Windows completely so the crutch isn't there. Use a Windows VM if you absolutely need to.
Many people speak about security risks because there will be no updates, but the solution is simple, you install Linux on a new partition and do all your networking from there, I use Windows for some programs and games and that's it
So simple I can have my father-in-law do it. And support him over the phone from a few states away. Simple.
Duh ! Why you shouldn't? /J
Having moved fully to Linux some months ago, I look at this kind of thing both with with a feeling of smug satisfaction and with cold chills of somebody who only now starts to fully realise just how massive, heavy and fast the incoming train they just dodged is.
It's really wild looking back at what we considered acceptable in the Win 7 era versus now.
Ah their planned obsolescence lead to botnets that fuck every largo company... so that Microsoft gets looked at.
But the American way is to blame hundreds of thousands.. or even millions of individuals.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
