Technology

Microsoft 'Convinced' me to move to Linux, best move I've ever done.

They're not trying to get me to upgrade my OS, they're trying to get me to buy a whole new fucking system for no good reason. Every last one of them can die in a fire.

And that's before we consider that Windows 11 is actually a downgrade.

Microsoft was successful in convincing me to upgrade to Mint however.

Mandatory secure boot is the thing. Before I get a new motherboard and CPU I’ll just get Linux. Gaming works great there, and those 3 things I actually need Microsoft for can be used in a VM

Looking at it from a perspective other than "Windows shit, use Linux", MS' biggest issue here is that the vast majority have no compelling reason to upgrade. Currently.

To the average punter, W11 offers nothing that W10 doesn't already have. There's no new technologies that they care about, no new tentpole software that they're dying to try. Nothing. It has copilot running rampant through it, but most people don't know what that is or don't give a shit.

Give Apple their due, when they announce an OS update, they focus hard on the ways it improves over the current offering. Ways it can interact with your other devices, for example. Or even just a whole new design.

But MS advertise nothing beyond "This is new, come get it!", then wonder why no one cares.

ASTER

I upgraded from Windows 11 to EndeavourOS. No regrets, it’s a huge improvement.

Help! Our unsustainable behavior of screwing over customers in the name of quarterly profits has finally caught up to us! Turns out there are long term consequences of our behavior, and now Linux can truly go toe-to-toe with Windows on a home desktop!

Makes me miss windows 7.

https://xkcd.com/528/

How much of this is people not wanting to upgrade vs not being able to upgrade because their PC isn't supported?

Had to use Rufus to even install it on a ThinkPad which works perfectly. Drivers and all.

Maybe they should stop trying to be like Apple. You can’t limit upgrades then complain about no one upgrading.

Replace that with "will never"....except at work because most* CEOs are stupid.

I mean... they force to upgrade people to OS with critical SSD issues.

The virtual machine I installed windows on to play games with kernel-level anticheat and other such spyware apparently isn't compatible with windows 11. That's a positive for 2 reasons, which are:

1. It can't run Windows 11, so no risk of a forced upgrade
2. Windows won't constantly harass me to upgrade.

10/10 experience, would not give give Windows access to bare metal again.

They allow you to enroll in extended updates so you can get more time to upgrade 🤣

It convinced me to ditch dual booting and to go full Linux

I’m glad I’ve done away with Windows and Word/ office products for a very long time. Good riddance

Microsoft has given users fair warning, and said that users can get a year of updates for free but eventually the company will have to face facts and extended support beyond October.

We can’t recall a time where Microsoft has done such a thing but these are extenuating circumstances given that most users just aren’t budging.

WTF is this guy talking about? Far as I can tell this is the Win7 playbook all over again. Looking it up, this was the timeline:

Jan. 13, 2015: Microsoft ended Mainstream Support for Windows 7.

Sept. 6, 2018: Microsoft announced the ESUs for Windows 7. The ESU program is a paid service that provides critical security updates for legacy products for up to three years after Extended Support ends.

August 2019: Microsoft announced a year of free ESUs, but only for select users, including customers with an Enterprise Agreement or Enterprise Agreement Subscription with active Windows 10 Enterprise E5, Microsoft 365 E5, or Microsoft 365 E5 Security subscriptions. This was limited to only Government E5 stock keeping units.

Jan. 14, 2020: Microsoft ended Extended Support for Windows 7.

Jan. 10, 2023: The ESUs reached their end of life on the first Patch Tuesday of 2023.

That's almost a decade of post-end of support updates. If anything, MS confirmed ESU before trying to shut down home user patches this time, so it looks less like terrified backpedalling. And as the linked article itself admits, the data they're reporting on shows a significant number of users still on Win7. The article waves it away as just "too many", but the original report says 8.5%.

Because, as it turns out, the kind of people using Kapersky antivirus software and the number of people who would not upgrade from a 16 year old OS that has lost support half a dozen times over the past half a decade show significant overlap. In the Steam survey right now Win 7 is only 0.07%, for reference.

While we're at it Win 11 is 60% vs 35% for Win 10. For all the headlines when Steam shows Linux growth you don't often hear over here that Win 11 went up by 0.5% and Windows overall went up by 0.36%, although it's worth noting that Windows has been pretty stable between 94 and 96% since the survey started.

I've said it before and I'll keep reality checking it: the Win 10 end of support process has been wildly overhyped, particularly among Linux-friendly circles. It is not meaningfully different to moves out of other "good" versions of Windows and it's not a catastrophic crisis point for MS, for better and worse. They'll keep support up for the people who need it for as long as they're willing to pay and most legacy home users won't even know their old Win10 is unsupported because it'll just keep happily chugging along with all the same malware it already has until something breaks and they have to buy a new laptop with a preinstalled Win11 or 12 or whatever.

The most the Win10 death hype is doing to hurt MS is create a flurry of social media posts that can convince tech savvy, Linux-curious users who were previously held back by lack of gaming support to give user friendly distros a try.