OS upgrades vs security updates is a whole different ballgame. We should not confuse the two.
Windows forces major upgrades in many cases, sometimes rendering the device inoperable because OS upgrades carry inherent risks. Forced upgrades are simply irresponsible. We need that consent to let the user back up files beforehand as a bare minimum, even overlooking the ethics side of user consent. Is MS going to fix my parents PC when they break it?
Forced updates? I see the argument, but I have to insist on user consent at all times. By default is okay. Explicitly violating the human’s will seems wrong. Software should serve people. But I can understand the argument even if I don’t agree with forced updates.
I’m not so sure about that. FOSS is unlikely to gain a direct profit motive, and if it does, there will necessarily be versions with those features removed. How can you stop me from turning off ads or updates when I control the entire operating system? That’s kind of the whole point of free and open source software—the user is in control. Myself or someone with the appropriate skills can modify the code not to do those things. If that results in a better product, everyone will switch to it, killing those features permanently.
I have no problem with an open source AI if it proves useful, but it will be running on my machine under my terms. In fact, I already have an LLM running entirely locally.
i used to care about windows... i had to use and support it at work, it was easy to crack and maintain. then something changed and i walked away into linux land.
i still need to care about windows at work, but instead of getting all anx-y i just laugh it off. my employers are getting exactly what they chose.
its HILarious when shit doesnt work... a new version breaks all inter-company communication, all that nonsense is just pure entertainment now.
my canned response is 'were all beta testers now, buckle up'
Yup! The only remaining Windows system I personally use is my work laptop. I feel like its lack of customizability holds back my workflow but I've kept Windows on it so I don't get rusty for when I need to support my users. At this point I think I'll just spin up a decommissioned box for Windows testing and finally throw Linux onto my work system.
You're so right that we're all beta-testers now. If I recall correctly, MS and Google both laid off a ton of their QA people like 10 years ago and now the customers are functionally QA. Our M365 tenant just dealt with over two straight weeks of email issues. According to the actual MS advisory, this was due to a code update pushed to production to "increase reliability." No shit!
I just have a beast of a machine that has more RAM than I know what to do with.
I have a VM of windows 10 that runs in my 4th monitor at all times, it's got 32 gigs of RAM and 2tb of storage. I have another VM that I only run for rendering which uses my whole GPU as passthru. (Having just the 1 windows VM do that interferes with gaming 😁).
I use my NAS for project folders and both VMs have access to the NAS.
The other day I wasted who knows how much time trying to get an old version of Xcode to run on macOS 14 because I needed to upgrade the OS for some other unnecessary reason. At least on windows has reasonable compatibility. Macs are different from PCs because they are not 'personal computers', they are devices that you buy from Apple with a limited set of computing functionality
I actually had that realization yesterday. At this point I hope they keep doing it and making Win11/worse. I'm not moving out of Win10 and I have Linux on all my other PCs, and this should push more people into Linux too.
The big advantage of those three is you have it pre-installed. Pre-installed with forced defaults in very powerful.
I see people using edge, never realising that they're using edge. Asking to install very expensive office 365 suites for very simple documents and power points. Word can't even display text properly, most people don't notice because they don't know any different.
Linux needs a better Ubuntu. One all the Linux users can easily recommend. That manufacturers can be confident shipping on laptops.
Once that hurdle is cleared. The user has Linux pre-installed, the manufacturer provides all the necessary drivers. Linux is often easier to resolve issues with. The settings are clearer and better laid out, dependencies are better and easier to manage than windows. Solutions are easier to find and implement, they also don't change unexpectedly.
What about people that use Office 365? Especially if your company uses the OneDrive and Sharepoint integration. While I agree that Windows is becoming ridiculous, Excel just keeps getting better and better. I am at the point where I have actually moved some of my (minor) analytics back into Excel away from Jupyter Notebooks since it is easier to communicate with some stakeholders that way.
Bloomberg Terminal also doesn’t have a Linux (or Mac for that matter) install. Hard to do my job without that.
Make no mistake, I ran Linux for a long time as “daily driver”. Even bought a full Windows 10 license for use in a VM on QEMU. Then I realised all I was doing was booting up my machine and spending my entire day in the Windows VM.
So I guess what I am saying is that Microsoft can get away with murder because of Office 365 (which they now confusingly call Microsoft 365)
I keep getting shocked with Arch lately. Software is getting better fast with AI to boost productivity. Blender runs at light speed on a laptop with an i7-6700hq, 16GB DDR4 and a GTX 970. Even Wayland works super well!
This is how Windows rolls out "features" gradually. Next it'll be on by default, then it'll need a registry edit, then you'll need a third party ad blocker...
At every stage we'll be told it doesn't matter and it was already basically like that.