The avalanche has just began.
Can yall idiots just fact-check for a goddamn second? https://www.windowslatest.com/2023/10/16/no-windows-12-is-a-free-upgrade-and-wont-require-a-subscription/
Edit: Just type “windows 12 subscription” into your search bar. It’s fewer words than any of these comments!
But but but that’s not as fun as hearing a bunch of Linux users bitch about shit they heard once maybe.
Really though this website seems to have more misinformation and just general stupidity than even reddit.
I simply just hate windows and dont care if its true or not. they sell you without subscription.
if this is true I might actually stop being lazy and mess with Linux for my personal systems
Please do.
One of us, one of us!
There is no “us” or “them”. If Microsoft will maintain its streak of spoiling everything they touch, everyone will switch to Linux sooner or later 😉
Now, for an actual sane take, unless we do the actual marketing work in order to gather interest from people, no, not even close to everyone will switch to Linux, specially considering Microsoft has literal millions of dollars to spend in marketing and will likely spin this in a way that non-techy people specially will buy in due to not knowing any choice.
This is a PSA begging people to contribute to their favorite distros not (only) with code but with marketing. Social media posts, videos, word of mouth recommendations, advocacy, events, etc. If your distro doesn’t have a marketing team, create one, as most projects should already have done two decades ago. If your distro has one (like we do in Fedora), join it. There’ll likely be something you can help with.
Okay, you’ve got a point 😅
Arch doesn’t need a marketing department. If someone uses Arch they’ll tell you.
@averagedrunk @joojmachine I use arch btw
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This is suspiciously similar to the original pitch Torvalds made for Linux… I’m in!
That’s true. We’re just getting the window managers and drivers ready for everyone who will follow us.
This is extreme copium, sorry to say. You have no idea how much shit the average person will eat to prevent having to learn something new. For someone who has never manually installed an OS before, even Windows, the idea of doing that with something like Linux and potentially deleting their existing OS is genuinely frightening. Never underestimate the fact that people will pay through the nose to ensure they don’t have to contend with the unknown.
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But but but 2023 is the year of Linux on the steam deck! 🎉
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As it turns out, the rumours discussed by some outlets are based on the “IoT Enterprise Subscription” of Windows 11, not Windows vNext. For those unaware, Windows 24H2 or Windows vNext is what Windows 12 is being called publicly. As you can see in the above screenshots, the “subscription” code strings found in the preview builds are associated with a new Enterprise version of Windows 11 loT and have nothing to do with Windows 12 or future versions of the OS.
I’m not saying to use it or to not switch to linux, but maybe this isn’t that much of a concern.
I’d be more concerned about
the next version of Windows will be heavily integrated with AI and cloud capabilities.
Windows accounts for 12% of their profits, and I’m willing to bet that the consumer versions are a very small part of that. Most businesses are not buying OEM licenses. They are already using a subscription model for M365 which includes Windows licenses or a standard EA or SA agreement.
They learned after the Windows Phone that they don’t need to win the client OS battle as long as they can get their other products on the devices. Since then Windows has really focused more on keeping you locked into the Microsoft ecosystem versus keeping locked into Windows itself. Hence why the upgrades have all been free where in the past you would have to repurchase each new edition of Windows.
Of course I could be completely wrong. They have done some bonkers stuff in the past.
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Agreed. Also why they’re more and more fucking annoying about OneDrive and O365 subs. I would be extremely surprised at seeing anyone at MS thinking the best way to monetize Windows is to get consumers, who are notoriously more and more tired of subs in general, is to get them to pay a sub fee on the computer they bought. Let’s face it, virtually no one is buying a Windows license, it comes with the machine they buy. If you told people that they have to now pay a fee every month/year to keep using it.
I don’t use it sense 11, but aren’t more recent versions of 11 already having Machine Learning “AI” Built in?
Couldn’t tell you, I’m on 10 myself because my laptop is old and doesn’t meet the TPM requirement. Which, tbh, is probably best.
I’m an early adopter of Linux (early as in 96-97) but I also run MacOS and Windows so I’m I tell you this from an unbiased point of view. Linux has never been easier to run. My daily driver is a ThinkPad running Pop!_OS Linux and I never have to think about it. I just installed and everything ran.
I don’t game on my daily driver, I use MacOS for music. At this point Windows is relegated to Adobe Creative Suite, GeForce Now, and the occasional game I can’t run on Linux or GeForce Now.
Truly ungovernable, mad respect.
No doubt. LibreOffice is way better than the windows office sweet now. Seriously zippy fast and easy to use. And less stuff breaks.
I haven’t found it that difficult. Just take the plunge.
I’m not concerned with difficulty just that it’ll take a bit of my time
yes I’m lazy
It’s very gradual and fun because it’s new. A lot of you being lazy is also just your safety mechanism kicking in so you don’t dive into every single urge all the time.
Once you dip your toe, you’ll be at it for a long and good time.
Just start by dual booting one of the “easy” distros and doing stuff that doesn’t require Windows. Eventually you’ll start spending more and more time on it out of comfort, then one day you may realise that you haven’t needed your Windows partition in months, and can skip out on it entirely.
Another alternative is to use FOSS software this is available on Linux and Windows. Get used to the software before the desktop itself. For me, dual booting was a lot of work and wasn’t fun. Maybe live booting for a session or two could be a way to go? I never tried that.
It’s easy if you know how to manage your anger
oh I’m experienced with anger I assure you. I work with CSS and PHP in my job
😱
you’ll do fine then
Or not. Swearing at the screen and punching the keyboard always feel cathartic after failling to do something for the nth time.
well, lucky you. When i get super pissed i keep being tempted to snap my own fingers
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Yeah, these don’t do anything for me. Good suggestion tho
Please don’t do that.
fine.
Thank you. Much obliged.
I made the switch about a two months ago. I’m using my windows side of my dual boot a hell of a lot less than I thought I would, mostly thanks to steam’s proton.
Started with zorin, but eventually landed on mint.
I’m trying to narrow down today’s distro choices, would you mind telling why you switched away from Zorin?
The file explorer has some pretty limited options, and not many features. Or at least, it doesn’t have some of the features I like by default.
It does have zorin connect, which is really nice, but I later found it it is a re-skinned version of KDE connect, so not much is lost by moving to another distro on that front.
It also seemed to not have as good windows support for certain things. BG3 kept on crashing on me for some unknown reason, with zero error messages to troubleshoot. On mint it worked first try, like it ought to.
At the end of the day, zorin just isn’t as customizable as I want, whereas mint is.
Thank you! All the advertised built-in compatibility layers seemed too promising, so I’ve been wondering how often it breaks or doesn’t work as well as another distro. Also good to know the connect stuff can be added just by installing KDE. And Dolphin probably a better file manager.
What’s your preferred file manager, if you don’t mind?
Yeah, I was a bit disappointed with the compatability as well. But luckily it hasn’t effected me too much on mint. So far only two programs I use haven’t been compatible, and even then they aren’t programs I use often.
What’s your preferred file manager, if you don’t mind?
Nemo, which is the default for mint.
Also another reason I switched to mint now that i remember, I wanted to switch to a non-Ubuntu system. The whole point of switching to Linux is to get away from all the corpos getting their hands on your system/data. Unfortunately I only learned how shitty canonical is about it after I unstalled zorin.
So I currently have mint debian edition installed.
have mint debian edition installed
Oh that’s great, you’re exactly the one I need to talk to then, because I’ve been debating why even go with an Ubuntu-based distro at all when it’s based on Debian, and whether or not the Debian version would be a better choice. I’ve been running multiple VMs trying to work out the differences.
Before I found Debian Mint, I wrote a script for base Debian 12.2 to auto-install wine, steam, and everything else I could think of based on what’s in Linux Mint and Garuda… then discovered Debian Mint and have been wondering if that’s my best choice, because I have no idea what I could be missing in the background on my Debian install, or didn’t set up correctly because I don’t know about it.
I also noticed that Debian Mint currently uses a newer kernel than Ubuntu Mint… 6.1.0-13 vs 5.15.0. For a newer kernel than that you have to go with the Ubuntu Mint EDGE version (6.2.0) or Arch (6.1.57-lts or 6.5.7-zen).
—
Has there been any particular thing you had to do to Debian Mint to make it work better for you?
I will say right off the bat, it sounds like you know a bit more about me, so whatever you decide will probably already be a pretty informed choice.
With that said, having used ubuntu occasionally in the past, it doesn’t feel all that different from Debian. They are roughly equally functional, performant, etc.
Before I found Debian Mint, I wrote a script for base Debian 12.2 to auto-install
I probably should do something similar, because down the line who knows, I might need a full re-install.
because I have no idea what I could be missing in the background on my Debian install, or didn’t set up correctly because I don’t know about it.
Very anecdotally, like I said there has only been two programs that I haven’t been able to get running that I really want. That’s fusion360 and dungeon draft. Both of which I could pretty easily get running in a VM.
Actually now that I think about it, there is a 3d program, and that’s fortnite. But that’s because their management doesn’t give a flying fuck about linux, and so their anti-cheat breaks the game. So no distro will be safe from that.
I also noticed that Debian Mint currently uses a newer kernel than Ubuntu Mint
Again, it sounds like you are much more informed about it than me. But personally, it hasn’t made a difference for me. I can run my games, the basic internet browsing apps that I like, etc.
Has there been any particular thing you had to do to Debian Mint to make it work better for you?
The most complex thing that needed set up was getting my drives auto mounted on startup. But debian mint has a pretty straightforward way of setting it up, so it took maybe 5 seconds.
Beyond that, it’s just been a small bit of effort setting up the programs I use. Steam, freetube, the prism minecraft launcher, my nvidia drivers, cura, KDE connect, gitkracken, vscode, vlc, etc. It is really low effort honestly, basically the same effort as windows. The software manager/library on debian has been pretty decent to me.
News flash, it’s not
I’ve already been playing with Nobara and Linux Mint.
linuxjourney.com is a good resource
I personally reccomend Zorin OS. The default GUI has the windows layout, so you won’t be too confused. Also it is very pretty.
or just crack windows (is faster than setupping everything in linux)
Setting up a functional Linux environment can be accomplished within a comparable timeframe to that required for a Windows installation. When opting for user-friendly distributions such as Linux Mint or Ubuntu, the installation process becomes equally accessible for users, presenting no significant challenges when compared to Windows, so while you are entitled to hold this opinion, its factually incorrect.
omg linux fanboy when a joke is made (he can’t handle a joke on his only reason to live)
Hard agree. I got a friend trying to get me on linux, and I’ve just been on windows since my first pc.
But fuck it. I’ll maintain 10 until eol and then whatever Linux supports will be the games I play on steam.
if you don’t use linux, why are you here?, not gate keeçing, but it’s linux memes, i didn’t know other people could find it funny
I use Linux for work and on some virtual machines personally to mess around sometimes so I know my way around it
To be clear, it may be a linux meme, but it’s a post about a possible future with Windows, that may lead some to switch to linux. Windows users being in here, commenting and asking questions, isn’t weird.
This was based on a report that was debunked almost immediately, y’all gotta stop reposting this every day.
Nooo but it confirms my viewpoint :-(
Oh that sweet, sweet confirmation bias hit. Nothing like it!
Good luck, the vegans of the transistor realm have decided that complaining about fake news regarding windows is the best topic to just never shut the fuck up about.
Are you OK?
I love paying for spyware!!!
Everyone here thinking it’s the beginning of the great migration :tm:
Sorry guys, people are just going to use cracked versions of windows to play games
I suspect most people that only use their Windows computer for general stuff like web browsing, e-mail, multi media, office etc., which is probably the majority by far, will actually fall for the subscription scam.
Yea sadly most people already do via an M365 subscription, if MS decides to tack an OS in with that, doubt many would care enough to make a swap.
I subscribe to M365 because my kids’ schools all distribute their assignments as Word docs. And they apparently use the most obscure formatting features, so the only way to get them to render and print properly is to use full Office desktop. Not even the web apps show them properly, and LibreOffice / google docs import totally mangle them.
Could you ask ChatGPT yet to reformat it for LibreOffice?
Well here at least the school offered an MS Office license to students few years ago, but still, have to pay for the OS…
This is the moment where Hannah Montana Linux will shine
If you’re not running Ubuntu Satanic Edition are you really a devout follower of the dark Lord
uwuntu better
Hell of a targeted ad
A chance for Faramir, Captain of FOSS, to show his quality.
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The best time to start is now. The second best time to start is now.
Welcome!
Fuck, I missed the two best times to start
We’ll pretend you didn’t if you get started.
Kudos to Microsoft on keeping to inpirationally show us with every edition it can still get even worse… 😅
The enshittening continues. Why charge people once when you can charge them repeatedly until they decide enough is enough and leave?
Enshittification referred to products and services that were previously good
Hey now, Windows XP was pretty decent!
By the standards of its day, I’d even say Windows XP was good.
It was if you pretend anything before service pack 1 didn’t happen, I saw so many infected machines back then it wasn’t even funny. And I guess the more professional users saw it as a downgrade from Windows 2000.
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And their stock price has never been the same since you abandoned them!
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Things dont have to be good to get worse.
It’s not going to happen for normal users. This is most likely for users that already use some ms subscription, like office.
It’s none of the above. Turns out all the references to a subscription in the test builds were to Windows Internet of Things Enterprise subscription edition. Most enterprise things are ran on a subscription type license where you pay for support and rights to use it on an annual basis.
Or they might lock additional things behind the subscription, like PowerShell, or Windows Defender.
Windows Defender
So like a mafia stategy. “[not really] Nice OS, be a shame if something happened to it. Maybe you should consider our protection plan”?
It’s for Windows 365
This is really just going to make Apple more sales and cripple the PC gaming market.
Then, Apple will do it and… maybe that will be the year of Linux desktop? 😉
Linux Gaming is now a truly viable force thanks to Steam (Proton). The PC Gaming market will be fine without Windows.
Except it’s still hell for online games with anti-cheat. Just about every other month, another article comes out about “Linux players unable to launch…” or “Linux players banned from…”
Valve is actively funding alternatives to those anti cheats and also working with them to get Linux supported. Its just not happening overnight.
Both easy anticheat and battle eye have support for Linux native and proton, it’s just down to the developers of games to enable it
Without windows more developers would likely enable support
Idk, I see this argument every time this discussion comes up but I’ve yet to experience anti cheat issues. I don’t think they don’t exist but it’s been extremely smooth sailing for me
Idk, but I know the last time I saw it happen was just under two months ago, with Apex Legends. IIRC, they never reversed those, either.
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As much as I hate being bled to death by subscription services, It’s probably still cheaper to subscribe to windows for a whole decade than use an apple computer outright for half that time.
The majority of Linux users aren’t in it because it’s free (as in free beer) anyway, and most broke gamers will likely continue to just pirate windows regardless.
However now that data usage and privacy and security is becoming a hot topic in the age of AI, I think once Microsoft and apple both start getting really brazen with their telemetry and embedded spyware, it will finally be the year of the Linux desktop! ;)
Apple is by far the worst offender of expensive shit products. It’s not going to make apple gain shit…the barrier to entry for an apple computer is just fucking stupid for what you get…nothing that good.
My MacBook air was like 1700, it’s faster than most pcs of that price.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Manifesting this outcome right now
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My suspicion is that home installations will still be available at retail or OEM channels.
The subscription likely applies more to enterprise and possibly Windows 365. Enterprise licensing is a mess which might actually be simplified by a subscription pay-what-you-actually-use model.
Also it’s be cool to see windows 365 come to consumers as an alternative to a full PC. Would be able to standardize on home thin-client builds, or possibly add it as a feature to the Xbox Platform.
Maybe all business versions, or subscriptions if joined to a domain
I’m just imagining a not-so-distant future where there’s $200 set-top boxes that can hook up to any HDMI port and have a current-gen cloud console and a nearly fully functional PC. Or cloud laptops that have W365 bundled in as part of a 5G service.
Was already looking to jump ship at the file explorers having ads as a “test” but boy howdy, do it Microsoft. This would push me to make the Linux switch outright.
Why wait for Microsoft when you can just…
Still just a bit worried about everything I use not being compatible. Windows is the normie choice so chances are if it exists there’s a Windows version but with Linux I’d start from scratch.
Tell you what, when I replace my motherboard in a couple weeks, I’ll slot this M.2 I’ve got and put a Linux partition on it. Any recommendations on what ‘version’ to start with for a heavy gamer? The different names of Linux ‘versions’ are kernels, right?
The different names of Linux ‘versions’ are kernels, right?
Not really, the kernel is basically the only thing all distros share in common. The different Linux “distros” (as in distributions) are called that precisely because they have different ways of distributing the software they use to build the OS. They use different means to achieve the same goal.
Any recommendations on what ‘version’ to start with for a heavy gamer?
I am biased towards Fedora since I am a contributor of the project, but you can’t go wrong with Ubuntu either. It’s more popular so there’s a lot more content about it online if you need help.
The only thing I recommend against is using small, niche distros or DIY distros (like Arch) as your first. Stick with big distros with big communities and don’t be afraid to ask questions in the forums if there’s any doubts or if you face any issues.
It sounds daunting in the beginning, but it’s way easier than the internet make it seem.
Ah okay, thank you for clearing the terminology up a bit. So the distros are what have different names and have unique contributions from different people, the kernel is just the common ‘core’ they expand off? I think I got it.
I hear a lot of people mention Arch to the point it’s a meme but I’ll take your advice and steer clear. Ubuntu is the one I’m probably most familiar with on a name basis to the point I thought it and ‘Linux’ meant the same thing. I might start with Ubuntu only for the sake of documentation and once I get a familiar idea of how to do basic commands and troubleshooting, I’ll give your Fedora a shot.
The only thing that’s kept me from the switch is compatibility concerns. Lots and lots of people harp on about that and until Steam Deck I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to game with it. I’m ready to break my Microsoft chains though.
I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to game with it. I’m ready to break my Microsoft chains though.
Oh, don’t worry, unless you are really into competitive multiplayer games with anti-cheat software, you’ll likely have a great experience gaming on Linux! Just don’t forget to tick the Proton compatibility layer option on Steam’s settings (if they haven’t yet made that the default, I’m not sure nowadays).
In any case, if you’re wary if a certain game you want to play is playable or not, just check on ProtonDB.
