Yes, about all that old Windows 10 hardware.....

[CharlesV]

@DukeComposed and @j2mcgreg all excellent points!!

[DukeComposed]

I think that there's a fourth factor in play these days --> money. With inflation prevalent everywhere users are going to balk when a Win 11 update wipes out their video or sound card (because their OEMs aren't providing updated drivers) and they are faced with having to buy while not really being able to afford new kit. I think that in the near future the Microsoft ecosystem will have priced themselves out of a large part of the market.

I think Microsoft would give Windows away to home users if they could. Honestly, the home consumer market of selling boxed copied to individuals is not where they make their money. The real money is in selling massive numbers of seats of the enterprise client editions to major corporations. The calculus, so far as I can see it, is balancing "letting qualified Joe Homeusers download a free upgrade to Windows 11" with "Dell and HP pay millions to put a Windows Home Edition image on literally millions of new PCs a year". And then, on top of that, comes balancing the respective outrage of individual PC owners against the OEMs who need to bank on the notion that a new TPM chip is needed to make the next version run correctly, and who know that most people won't or can't replace the original hard disk in their machine when it fills up, or buy a second disk and format it as a new volume.

When Windows 11 or 12 obsoletes your existing rig, Linux may be an option... but that presupposes the users' network, graphics, and sound cards are supported. Companies like NVIDIA have done better in recent days at improving their Linux drivers, but historically it's been hit or miss if your old commodity Dell just happens to have an obscure onboard graphics chipset that has an open source driver for it or not.

Sometime circa 2000 or so I had some low- or middle-tier Dell Dimension, I think, with an Intel i815 graphics chip on the motherboard. Not only was this chipset not well-regarded in the open source communities, but this was in the XFree86 era where you had to write your X11.conf files by hand through a lot of trial and error because the config file auto-generating software that came with XFree86 always guessed wrong. That PC ran Windows just fine, but on any other OS I could never get it to do more than run a stock standard TTY. There are probably thousands or tens of thousands of other dinky little hardware devices out there with no working Linux drivers, and, to your point, being unable to replace those stupid little chips with something functional, but more expensive, will be what stops someone from making the switch.

[needmorebrains]

Can I just add a little "also tried" sub-category here?

I tried to use a full Hyper-V compliant W10 VM and add Linux to the system. To be fair, the computer has just enough resources to run one OS at a time, but I read in the MS learning docs that it could be done and Linux would run properly. Nope. That was a real lie. It (MX AHS) loaded, it emulated, it buffered, it ran. Like a 286 with OS2 warp! Where is my cursor? Hello, terminal, are you there?

I thought this might be a good tool to help show people that Linux is nothing to be afraid of, but this would scare (and scar) my wife for life!

[dings]

Although the majority will be happy with the patronizing and stereotyping of Microsoft and Google, which will get horribly worse with Artficial Pseudo-Intelligence, there are still people who want to or need to do things in a reasonable and controllable way. Those are the ones taking alternatives into consideration.
There are some good Linux distros for that purpose. (Some things could easily perfected as mentioned above, if there was intention to do so.)
MX Linux is among those who stand out.

[CharlesV]

Interesting article about this very subject !

Neowin posted that in 2020 Linux was a market share of 1.53% ... and has NOW gone over the top of 4%! ( 4.03% to be precise AND that doesnt count ChromeOS )

https://www.neowin.net/news/linux-for-d ... atcounter/

[needmorebrains]

Hi @CharlesV

I read the article. Interesting that they did make mention that ChromeOS was based on Linux! As are so many techhie things we use daily.

There was a recent news story about some public school IT admins limiting the hours that a student with a school-provided Chromebook could use the device on their homework. I guess that can be done for any device if you want that, but some of the parents seemed a little steamed about it.

https://www.inquirer.com/education/dept ... 40221.html
(disclaimer: I do not own the rights to this article and the news feed is a paid subscription service)

Carl

[CharlesV]

Hi @CharlesV

I read the article. Interesting that they did make mention that ChromeOS was based on Linux! As are so many techhie things we use daily.

There was a recent news story about some public school IT admins limiting the hours that a student with a school-provided Chromebook could use the device on their homework. I guess that can be done for any device if you want that, but some of the parents seemed a little steamed about it.

https://www.inquirer.com/education/dept ... 40221.html
(disclaimer: I do not own the rights to this article and the news feed is a paid subscription service)

Carl

Ya interesting. Not just homework, but disabling the devices. ( Perfect "Big Brother" scenario here imo ) . Course, if the school provides...

[Artim]

I have been advocating for Linux many years now, and only one person I've spoken to about it actually uses it - and that's only because she had no computer of her own so I gave her my spare laptop (with MX-Linux on it). When she finally gets her own computer, I doubt she'll care if it's Linux or not.

It's the same thing I run into when I suggest using Diaspora or Friendica instead of Facebook and Tiktok, with their privacy issues and stuff. They don't care, so they don't listen. "I've got nothing to hide, so privacy doesn't matter to me," they'll say. In the immortal words of the great prophet Morphius,

You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it."

[Arnox]

Former Windows fan and veteran here, now refugee after the massive disaster that was 10, and then the afterbirth of a sequel that was 11...

To summarise:
Windows Vista introduction - 2007 will be the Year of the Linux Desktop.
Windows 2000 EOL - 2010 will be the Year of the Linux Desktop.
Windows 8 introduction - 2012 will be the Year of the Linux desktop.
Windows XP EOL v2 - 2014 will be the Year of the Linux Desktop.
Windows 10 introduction - 2015 will be the Year of the Linux Desktop.
Not enough cared about Windows Vista for 2017 to be the Year of the Linux Desktop.
Windows 7 EOL - 2020 will be the Year of the Linux Desktop.
Windows 11 introduction - 2021 will be the Year of the Linux Desktop.

although, technically we aren't far off considering how many people use Android.

Windows 10 EOL - 2025 will be the Year of the Linux Desktop.

Look, I understand why some Linux veterans here are skeptical about any year being the "year of the Linux desktop," but trust me, lads, and take it from me. Windows has never been this bad for this long with so few options for a good OS available (but they ARE still there, thank goodness for MX, AntiX, and, of course, Debian). And what's more, the idiocy and mismanagement in modern day Windows looks like it will only be getting worse now, not better. Windows 7 and even 8.1 used to be a trusty refuge from the xxxxxxx storm, but 7/8.1 is now just too damn old these days for any serious modern work, and the only good full Windows replacement that I know of nowadays is MX Linux. (Or AntiX if you need a very light OS.) You could also do vanilla Debian or Linux Mint Debian Edition, but those are just more stripped down versions of MX.

If you'd like more details about this, see my video on this subject here (skip to 56:48 for the section on Windows 10 and beyond): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE-fk3cg7LQ

[artytux]

I have been advocating for Linux many years now, and only one person I've spoken to about it actually uses it - and that's only because she had no computer of her own so I gave her my spare laptop (with MX-Linux on it). When she finally gets her own computer, I doubt she'll care if it's Linux or not.

It's the same thing I run into when I suggest using Diaspora or Friendica instead of Facebook and Tiktok, with their privacy issues and stuff. They don't care, so they don't listen. "I've got nothing to hide, so privacy doesn't matter to me," they'll say. In the immortal words of the great prophet Morphius,

You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it."

Very true the stay with Windows at all cost is it a case of staying in that comfort zone even if there is better out there, ahh just takes a bit of effort, I have to say that is sad !

Also who was it that wrote up some papers not too many years ago -=- that even if you think you have nothing to hide they (Gov etc) they can if and when they want, they roll out crimes and charges against anyone just by bending your online history -- Now who was that, that wrote that ? Does anyone remember.