They’ve been doing that with intel for ages, one build a slower OS the other a faster processor.
Those aren’t prompts. Those are ads. Call a spade a spade. “Microsoft tries to convince Windows 10 users to buy a new PC with full-screen ads”
I’m just a “normal person” lol but I have a 8 year old MacBook Air running I can’t remember what version. I’ve never been forced to upgrade. Does everything I need it to. I told Microsoft to fuck themselves in 1998. Now at work, I’ve been stuck with PC’s but that’s on the company’s dime, never mine.
If your Air hadn’t reached it yet, eventually it’ll reach EOS and you’ll stop receiving software/OS updates from Apple. While this won’t force you to upgrade hardware, it does add significant risk to your online time, since vulnerabilities will go unpatched. But, again, an important difference, which you shrewdly point out, you’re not forced or coerced to upgrade.
Edit: autocorrect
Fortunately, Firefox still supports old Macs. I have a running 2011 MacBook and 2008 iMac that are both still used for 3D printing and the other for an old local version of accounting software and email respectively.
While true, the vulnerabilities I’m referring to are those in the OS itself. But if they’re not connected, you should be ok. All I’m saying with this, is be super careful. Some of those vulnerabilities are zero click.
Edit: autocorrect that killed my grammar.
Micro$oft doesn’t understand that these full-screen new Win11 PCs are actually Linux ads!
I’m praising Valve right now for all the work they’ve put into Proton.
95% of my games work on Linux. Quite a few windows specific programs too. Praise proton and the wine team!
Examples of Windows programs that work via proton?
One very specific 3d printer program, greetings workshop (my mom had the program back in the day and she likes getting cards from it), Starcraft1 and Starcraft2 (works pretty well!), some contract specific programs. Theres a couple of others I have hooked up, but you get the idea.
If it doesn’t work the first time, I usually go on https://appdb.winehq.org/ or the proton specific one and take a look.
Okay yeah I knew about protondb but haven’t got wine figured out or heard of that winehq.
Thanks!
Yes, because of Proton, I’m seriously considering dumping Microsoft now. My big holdup was my library of Steam games. I just found out about Proton a couple of weeks ago, and as it turns out, most of my games are pretty compatible.
Do it! I just made the switch (using PopOS as my distro, AMD CPU, 1080ti GPU) and haven’t had much trouble with my extensive Steam collection. The biggest issue so far was Bioshock Infinite which actually runs native and I had to edit some configs for texture pools. SteamVR / Index has been a little unstable but seems to generally work (I don’t use it enough to be sure if it’s Linux or my hardware getting old).
SteamDB has been a excellent resource for checking compatibility and game specific tweaks.
Civ6 also has issues with the Linux version due to Aspyr slacking. A bunch of the newer content hasn’t been ported yet. Fortunately, you can force Steam to install the Windows version and run it with Proton.
My game library was what was holding me back too. Now I just have to see if animationdesk runs on linux and I’ll be all set make the switch.
If it doesn’t I don’t know what I’ll do. I haven’t found any other animation programs built primarily around onion skinning. I don’t need AI to create the tweens for me. I just want a bare bones program that let’s me do everything by hand.
I’ll have to check when I get out of work today and if it’s all good I’ll probably start researching installation processes this weekend. I don’t know much about Linux, but I guess I’m about to learn
You could run a windows vm on linux :)
If most of your games are on Steam, it makes the transition super smooth (with only a few exceptions I’ve had so far, and none that I’ve been unable to get working with a bit of tinkering)
I made the switch and never looked back.
Only thing it cost me was recently Apex Legends but I can deal.
This whole Win 11 mess is what finally convinced me to switch. I still can’t get over that Settings hasn’t reached feature parity with Control Panel yet. Figured if I have to re-learn how to do settings for the 10th time, I might as well do it in an OS that isn’t shoving ads in my face.
Try Fedora! I find it it just works out of the box and the little I don’t know I can Google, tho im Linux newby myself
I think for people who like Out-Of-The-Box, Fedora is ideal. It’s the only OS I didn’t have to troubleshoot the Bluetooth immediately.
I put it on my grandmothers computer and she hasn’t had any major complaints in 2 years 🤞
I was simply trying to format a disk and so searched in the start bar expecting a suitable control panel item to pop up any would have happened in any sane era of windows. Instead fucking bing opened and it brought me back web results for “format disk” as well as unrelated ads. fucking web results!
gargh
I have started switching my parents. Last year before all this really started getting crazy and I bought my mother a used HP elitebook laptop and set her up with Linux on it. Just to get her to test it out and use it. And replace her older laptops. There’s very little she does that actually depends on windows. Everything tends to be in the browser. There was only one odd application that’s odd even under windows. But it has an Android version that I got running with waydroid.
In the last month and I got my father a new used office PC that was about 10 Generations newer than what he had processor-wise. And set it up with Linux out of the box. He’s been enjoying using it it’s so much faster snappier and less spammy. And here this month when I have time. Getting my mother’s desktop PC converted over to dual boot at least with Linux as primary. I’ve had far fewer tech support issues since I’ve done it too.
Between system 76, framework, tuxedo, and a few other sellers. There are actually a few options now offering Linux out of the box. Next time I buy a PC it will likely be from one of them depending upon what I’m looking for. And if anyone asked me for recommendations they will be the only ones I will recommend. Apart from ordering used office machines and repurposing them LOL. Unless you want to do current gym Triple A games at 4K etc. You can get six generation i7 systems for around $100 and use graphic cards for 50 to 100. And play most games and have a great time. It’s actually kind of hilarious I have a couple of Verizon systems from the last 4 to 5 years. The system I spend more time on is a 6th generation i7 Lenovo business Tower. Largely because it’s running Linux and the others are running Windows.
I am concerned that most users won’t understand that either
They won’t. The vast majority of consumers aren’t even aware Linux exists.
LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX
Holy crap it’s a full-page ad!
Hey I remember you from that other post where you also spammed LINUX. :p
Bro you literally spammed Linux on my other older posts. Stop it
You’ll figure it out.
Cool. Since you believe they’ll figure it out, I guess that means you don’t have to spam.
You replied to OP with that spammy mess in two different posts? And then act all snotty when called out?
(Apparently also not noticing the name of the account you replied to nor its profile pic? - someone who does NOT need conversion)
Here’s a tip from a longtime Linux user: You’re making us look bad. Find a different way.
Btw.
I use Linux at home but my work computer uses windows. Work just bought me a new laptop with windows 11 pre-installed and I got ads to upgrade to a new “AI capable computer” on the login screen. This computer is maybe 3 months old and there are already ads telling me I need to get a new one.
🫢you don’t use windows enterprise at work?
You would be suprised how many companies don’t use enterprise version of windows andbjust use regular home ( pro even rarer ).
I run an IT team, and if anyone ever suggested buying Windows Home for business use, they’d have a bad day.
🫣
We’re a small nonprofit, so we usually just go with whatever is cheap and works most of the time. We don’t have many issues with it, so I don’t think its on the list of things to fix.
Don’t underestimate cybersecurity, even as small nonprofit…
Seconded. Data breaches at big companies may be what makes the news, but small businesses (and other organizations) are compromised far more often.
NO
I say this in a lot of threads lately but, here I go again:
I’m so glad I swapped to linux
Which distro?
Proud Linux Mint debutant here!
It’s been a year or so, and it’s so peaceful!
I have a windoze junkbox for photoshop, 3ds and some light gaming, and it’s so painful to operate, everything is just so slow when it comes to the OS. Launch a soft, right click, open the explorer…
Same experience here. I do embedded software development and usually have an entire monitor dedicated to command line stuff, and over the past year I’ve had zero urge to “upgrade” to a more hardcore distro.
I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon directly after several months of using different distros in a VM on windows. Feels good man.
Arch (well right now more precisely cachyos)
I’ve been using Linux on my homeserver (debian) and on previous laptops (arch) for almost a decade, but I only swapped my main desktop over this spring when nVidia sorted out waylaid explicit sync
Ubuntu, I wanted to go Debian but the installation wanted an ethternert connection to get that accomplished and I didn’t know that/think that far ahead
You chose netinstall iso?
I think so? I don’t remember now. I tried a few different ways and it came down to needing the ethernet connection so I bailed. Granted, I probably should have spent more than an hour on problem solving but I had a family hollering for me to go do stuff with them.
Yes
That doesn’t really matter too much and is mostly personal preference.
The biggest difference is which package manager and how up to date each program in there is. Arch and OpenSuse Tumbleweed will have quite up to date packages as they’re rolling release models while Mint and Ubuntu tend to be a bit slower and more stable.
I suggest going through the installation process of Arch linux at least once because it does teach you the basics of Linux but for usability you’d be better off with a distro that has a GUI installer.
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!
I don’t think so, this is rather complex video editing software and I never heard about anyone running it in a VM. Maybe I’ll give it a try someday.
Knowing nothing about it, I’d guess it might work but at a slight performance penalty. But depending on how it uses system resources (GPU use, etc) maybe not.
You could run a VM of windows on your windows system just to mess with it. I always used VirtualBox but idk if there are better cross-platform options.
Windows 10 LTSC currently has an EoL date of 2027-01-12.
No store, no cortana, much less bullshit in general.
LTSC is the only current windows version I even remotely consider having.Paying Microsoft more money so they can give you less Windows is a very Microsoft thing to do.
I stopped paying Microsoft a long time ago.
I’d bet this is pirateable tho
consider visiting a certain site called massgrave with the dev tld
Suit yourself, I don’t trust Windows already so, adding a third-party to that process doesn’t intrigue me in the slightest.
Yeah, I’m with you there. Don’t pirate an OS. That is just asking for shit to go wrong.
Always, always, always get OS images from the first party or first-party identified mirror.
Windows 10 LTSC (Long-Term Servicing Channel) is a specialized version of Windows 10 that’s all about reliability and stability. It’s tailored for specific use cases like medical devices, ATMs, industrial systems, and other environments where updates could mess with critical operations.
Key Points About Windows 10 LTSC: Minimal Updates: LTSC skips the frequent feature updates you see with regular Windows 10 and sticks to just security updates and critical fixes. Each version gets 10 years of support—5 years mainstream and 5 years extended. Stripped-Down Version: This version ditches all the extra stuff like Cortana, the Microsoft Store, Edge, and bundled games, making it lightweight and focused. Stability Above All: It’s designed to be rock-solid and isn’t about chasing the latest features. Release Schedule: New LTSC versions come out every 2-3 years, tied to specific Windows 10 feature updates (like Windows 10 LTSC 2021). Who It’s For: It’s for specialized devices and setups where you can’t afford sudden changes. It’s not something you’d typically use on your daily home or work PC. How You Get It: LTSC is available through volume licensing and is really meant for businesses and enterprises. Misconceptions: It’s not for regular use, like avoiding updates or keeping things ultra-simple on a personal PC. It doesn’t support a lot of modern hardware and features, so unless you have a very specific need, you’re better off sticking with the regular versions of Windows 10.
If you’re thinking about LTSC, make sure it actually fits what you’re trying to do—its limitations could end up being a headache if you’re not using it in the right way.
Funny, when I think of Windows, reliability and stability are the last things on my mind. I mean, if they could build a reliable release then why isn’t that shipped with all computers? You know, like with linux, the stable version is also the current release. Basically your description makes it sound like what’s really making Windows so unreliable is all the crapware that Microsoft forces down your throat.
Yes, exactly, because it’s all that crapware and bloatware that makes you inadvertently sign up for wholly unnecessary subscriptions to crap Services that nobody needs or wants. Plus all the advertisements. Lennox would seem to be a far better solution for a point of sale system or inventory management system or something like that
Sounds like a great sales pitch… “PoS machines, but unlike Windows-based devices ours continue to work after the first six months!”
Wait…Wait a minute… What about…MCDONALD’S ICE CREAM MACHINES!!!
If they switched to linux the ice cream would be colder and even smoother.
uh, yeah, machine’s broke, no ice cream today, sorry.
Did you try the one up town!?
And if you use IoT LTSC, its even more lean
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 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.
Remind me later… in 50 years.
“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.
I love how they advertise it as they’re doing you such a great big favor by allowing easy access to transferring files to the new system
Talk about creating a problem that way they can sell you the solution, they completely treat it as if they weren’t the original cause of having everyone have to buy new systems for the next windows in the first place.
Some group who hates Microsoft should just start doing their own unofficial security updates for 10 and slowly turn it into a Linux distro
People can’t afford groceries and Microsoft is over here saying this. So out of touch with reality.
They are going to finally cause the “year of the Linux desktop” revolution we’ve all been waiting for.
Unfortunately I think it will be sort of a monkey’s paw situation, where Linux gains a bunch of market share on the desktop because people will stop using their Windows desktops and just completely switch to using their phones and tablets if they haven’t already.
Ah, who am I kidding, they’ll still get all those sweet business/enterprise sales.