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Windows 12 in the wings

It is my understanding, and opinion, that Windows 11 was introduced to break compatibility with old machines, so that new CPU features can be required and utilized by the OS. It would have been an uproar had they done that with a biyearly Win10 update. In some ways this change was long overdue, but frankly, I would not have done it the way they have. It was rumored that an update to Windows 11 (maybe a special consumer release?) would bring a subscription. This same rumor existed with Windows 10. They could just as well release Windows 12 doing just that and go subscription, and reducing the confusion on whether it was a subscription Windows or not, and /closing/ the door on non-subscription OS available to the average person. Just my thought.

I am not happy with what they did with Windows in Windows 10. The UI slowly turned a mess. Features kept changing. Biyearly updates were forced by IT at various companies I frequented, and you did not know what you were getting after it.

I find this survey fascinating: Employees who can choose their Operating System are happier, use less Windows
lunduke.substack.com

Employees who can choose their Operating System are happier, use less Windows

Based on a survey of over 6,000 nerds.
lunduke.substack.com lunduke.substack.com

And this was a follow up a previous analysis on the same survey:
lunduke.substack.com

The least happy computer users: Those running Arch Linux & Firefox

Used by the happiest computer users: macOS, Slackware Linux, & Brave.
lunduke.substack.com lunduke.substack.com
(The least happy people of all modern OS families is with using Windows)

I think this is pointing to that MS is leveraging their popularity among businesses to keep Windows going, which forces people to stick with it. But people are tired of it, and wish they had a choice. I think the surge in people that have been able to choose their own OS, came in the last few years, are people that work from home and provide their own computer since some companies don't spend money on IT for work at home. I think this might be why MS is trying to woo people to stay by making running Linux software more seemless on top of Windows... it removes one excuse a major section of industry currently has not to go all Windows. If companies could not force Windows, it kind of makes you wonder what would happen.

I use linux on all my home machines, and use it 90% in business (I would not be able to get the job done without Linux). I don't have to tinker with it to make it work, it just works! I don't see any need for Wine anymore. But it's there if you want, and it does do a pretty decent job.
 
Agent Orange said:
Not nonsense. The key thing here is that you built the machine for someone and they use what you provided. No argument with that. But, what about the users that don't have access to your skills?
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It doesn't take skills to make a bootable flash drive, run the automated installer and then place two icons on the desktop.

Back in the DOS era, everyone was encouraged to experiment with the unknown. Now its assuming every new computer user is an idiot and has no business trying new things, they must always use windows because reasons.
 
I would guess the vast majority of regular Windows users don't even know what Linux is or might know but will never be willing to try it. Windows does what they need so why would they change? But Linux installs software from a GUI just like Windows. Just find what you want and click install.
 
ArcGIS Pro is an extremely power hungry application... even on a Core i5 with 8 gigs of RAM the thing still freezes on occasion, so trying to run it in VirtualBox on a Linux host would simply be a no go, assuming it would run at all in a VM. So yeah, that's my excuse for running W10 on my ThinkPad T550, despite now getting frustrated enough with it to punch out the LCD (twice!)

I'd say for 90% of my daily mundane tasks, Linux would more than suffice - don't care for Ubuntu but Puppy Linux is great. Although, Windows 7 still works just fine for everything except ArcGIS, and I'm an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" kind of guy.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
Absolute nonsense. I've built Linux machines for people with little to no computer skills and they got along just fine. Most people, all they do is use the internet and write word documents, so you just put Firefox and Libre Office on the desktop and they have no issues once you show them how to open those.
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It depends on what you need it for. Web browsing and documents are obviously easy, but you’re bound to encounter issues going any further than that a lot of the time. NVidia drivers, certain software. I ran into major problems within minutes of getting Linux set up on my main PC. If you even try to get into gaming, many games will also have issues. It’s getting better but just isn’t there yet.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
Fortunately, those days are long gone. Valve released a native Linux version of Steam back in 2013 with the Steampipe update, so you don't have to worry if Wine is going to break it or not. They also have a Proton compatibility layer, which is essentially a heavily customized Wine for running as many games as possible that have Windows only binaries. It works fairly well on many games, but it's far from perfect.

I switched my main workstation over to Linux back in 2019, and I've had fairly few issues with Steam on Linux, though I mostly play older games.
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Yeah but I never got that to work "Steam OS" IT was pretty terrible and I gave up on it.. way back then.
 
Agent Orange said:
Not nonsense. The key thing here is that you built the machine for someone and they use what you provided. No argument with that. But, what about the users that don't have access to your skills?
Click to expand...

They get a person with his skills fo help them out obviously.... .

Seriously what percentage of Windows users install that

OS from scratch?
 
GiGaBiTe said:
It doesn't take skills to make a bootable flash drive, run the automated installer and then place two icons on the desktop.
Click to expand...
Have you not met the majority of "end users" . Apparently doing those things is up there with neurosurgery when it comes to the average computer user. They dont even comprehend file management let alone what you described.
 
Both OSs aren’t too tricky to install (except gentoo of course) but the key difference is getting all your software happy after. The only two Linux-native apps I wanted to use when I tried it both broke in different ways. I wish it was better and it is good, but it has a while to go. This was all on bone stock Ubuntu by the way, the best supported distro I know of.
I hate the direction windows is going in, ever since Windows 8. Aero glass was a beautiful UI, and they replaced it with bland, flat, soulless corporate design. I hate it. Windows 11 is especially bad, everything takes extra clicks now. I tolerate windows 10 but I sure don’t love it. At least it doesn’t break all the time.
 
Chuck(G) said:
And that's why WIndows 10-equipped mobile phones are so common....

Anent the "Windows-compatible OS" thing--I seem to remember ReactOS, but don't know what became of the effort.
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Yeah, just there a thread in the Fall about that? It looked really good from the website. I wonder if anyone here tried it.
 
ReactOS is extremely unstable, but does work. Very very slow development and they’re not quite at XP compatibility yet. Very very cool project though and I wish they’d pick of more developers to get more progress done.
 
VERAULT said:
Have you not met the majority of "end users" . Apparently doing those things is up there with neurosurgery when it comes to the average computer user. They dont even comprehend file management let alone what you described.
Click to expand...

I've done deskside support for decades for thousands of people, so yes I know. The key to getting the point across is to not use any IT jargon and always speak in layman's terms. Find an analogue they can relate to and use that to teach them what they need to be able to do.

If they need teaching aids like written instructions or videos, give it to them. Also figure out who is the most outgoing and tech literate in the cube farm and have them go around and help other people. Once you get a support network going, it makes it so much easier to get people to learn things.
 
If you have trouble with Nvidia on Linux, go ask Nvidia for better support then or switch. I've used ATI/AMD open source drivers on Linux for 2 decades and they are built in and just work out of box. Games run fine. Although Nvidia cards work from my past experience, they only require to run the Nvidia installer on Slackware, so an extra step. Nvidia may be trying to improve integration in the Linux kernel to be better out of box.
 
VERAULT said:
Yeah but I never got that to work "Steam OS" IT was pretty terrible and I gave up on it.. way back then.
Click to expand...

Steam OS is Valve's Linux distribution, it is not the same as the Steam Linux client.

The Steam Linux client looks and behaves just like the Windows client, with the addition of the Proton compatibility layer that can be set per game.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
I've done deskside support for decades for thousands of people, so yes I know. The key to getting the point across is to not use any IT jargon and always speak in layman's terms. Find an analogue they can relate to and use that to teach them what they need to be able to do.

If they need teaching aids like written instructions or videos, give it to them. Also figure out who is the most outgoing and tech literate in the cube farm and have them go around and help other people. Once you get a support network going, it makes it so much easier to get people to learn things.
Click to expand...
I think its more that most folks dont care.. Its as if they think knowing these things is not important to them, or beneath them. They scoff at it. They use them all day long but feel they dont need to know anything about them. Talk softly and carry a big stick all you want. Most computer users are dumb as dirt. Let them keep Microsoft afloat until they follow the next trend and buy a mac.

And as far as "teaching aids" in concerned thats a huge pet peeve I have had for 30 years. They no longer have "learn the computer" classes for people/employee. They treat EVERYONE as if they are already familiar with computers rather than train... Noone trains anymore. Most people NEED classes.
 
In point of fact, desktop PCs are declining to the point where mobile devices are coming close to 2/3 of the OS market--and most of that is Android. Microsoft knows that desktops are declining and Windows is a minority product in the web server population, and almost nonexistent in the supercomputer area. Microsoft's attempt at a tablet, Surface, has been a disaster.

Anyone use PureOS?
 
Not to mention that chromeOS has taken just about the entire public education market now. Private schools are the only ones going with more expensive PCs and Macs.
 
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