I need Linux users to understand that Windows folks don’t stop using an operating system just because the support ended
I think that’s because they don’t understand or don’t care about the risks. Annoyingly I was in the process of making my own version of this campaign when it launched but I was aiming to explain why someone should care that the os is no longer supported and why its a problem first, then suggesting what to do about it. Options weren’t exclusively Linux but I realise buying a new device isn’t always an option either so some people will absolutely keep using 10. It’s not about getting to 100%, just enough that you can make a difference or keep devices out of landfill.
You “need” that?
In the absolute, you are wrong. Some will. Some have. I have migrated a few myself.
The end of support is a problem for Windows users and therefore an opportunity for Linux supporters.
Will a large fraction of Windows users migrate to Linux? Probably not. That said, more will move if we educate them and offer our assistance. Even a small migration of Windows users would be a significant increase in Linux Desktop users. If 5 percent of Windows users migrated, it would double the number of Linux users. So, moving even a small percentage of Windows users would be a major success.
Why does that bother you?
The irony is that you migrated them, they did not do this themselves.
Tons of people do not have an “IT guy” in their family of friends who would do such a thing for them. And they don’t care enough to learn how to install any operating system, let alone one they don’t know anything about.
For sure
Removed by mod
Makes sense now.
Fuck this guy and fuck the mods.
Not immediately, but eventually… When the the thing stops working correctly (because/or it is infected with entirely new and exciting viruses), they will take it to someone to fix and get told they have to upgrade and it will be pitched entirely as “your computer is a worthless paperweight, please buy a new one”. A campaign like this is there to plant the seed so that when those people get told, they might remember that they have options.
Remember when windows 10 was supposed to be the last version of windows? 🤣
It is the last - that a lot of us here will ever use willingly
Switched from W10 to EndeavourOS about two weeks ago. Happy so far. The full-screen W11 ads/W10 deprecation warnings were what pushed me over the edge.
Yeah, if the MS store and UWP apps worked out for Microsoft (they didn’t lol).
Now win11 is “okay, now this really will be last version of windows, because you can’t refuse installing our crap.”
if the MS store and UWP apps worked out for Microsoft
Interestingly, that’s exactly what prompted Valve to invest heavily into Linux compatibility. They saw a future where Windows became an iPhone-like OS where most users only obtained apps and games via Microsoft’s store, and they absolutely did not like that idea.
That future never came, but later on the project would pay dividends by allowing the Steam Deck to exist.
Yep, and I’d argue thats one of the most fruitful things to come out of MS’s blunders. It incentivized the other stakeholders to get win32/64 compatibility efforts into high gear for linux, and I couldn’t be happier with what we ended up with today (on the linux side ofc)
Edit: Also, I mentioned the MS store and UWP because that was the reason behind that infamous quote - the team wanted to motivate developers to get on board with the platform, and announcing 10 as the last version of Windows was part of that campaign.
There are a significant number of Windows users that lack technical skills and rely on others for support. Many will also have hardware that does not support Windows 11.
They have 4 choices:
- keep using Windows 10 without support
- upgrade to Windows 11 (without support)
- upgrade to Windows 11 (new hardware)
- upgrade to Linux
Many, probably most, of these users will be happy continuing to use an unsupported version of Windows. However not all of their support advisors will be happy with this. That includes me. I do not want to take responsibility for these users on an unsupported operating system.
For the same reasons, I am not going to recommend running Windows 11 without support.
So, the choice is buy new hardware or try Linux.
These people that are perfectly happy with their computers the way they are, why do they want to go buy new computers? This is not a very attractive option. I think it is the least attractive option.
Given the other choices, trying Linux, especially as a trial to see if new hardware purchases can be avoided, sounds attractive.
If you are relying on others for support, moving to Windows 11 or moving to Linux is the same amount of work. It is no more difficult and probably no less scary if somebody is helping you.
People would rather stay with what they have. Microsoft will not let them.
Just moved my mother from Windows 10 to LMDE.
Noice LMDE
I kinda wish I had the time and knowledge to volunteer at my local commu center and do a “Save your old computer from the Dump!” Free upgrade! to Linux" drive.
Doing it free means they won’t take care of it or care. Don’t dump that on yourself.
You can’t install it on just any machine, rendering millions obsolete.
Honest question. Is there some particular reason why people are against 11? Except the usual reasons people are against windows?
- Microsoft recall.
- Ads in software you paid for.
- Inability to use local accounts ( they’re closing the workarounds ) or dark patterns to switch you to one if you do have a local one
- bit locker forking you over
Edit: shoving AI down your throat
And this all besides all the other already present points to shit on Microsoft like the data collection
And any reasons a non-techie person would care?
- They wouldn’t know recall exists, so wouldn’t mind it
- They get ads everywhere so they are used to it
- They don’t know the difference between a Microsoft account and a local account
- They wouldn’t know bitlocker is active, and when their old computer dies, they switch over and OneDrive gives them all their family pictures back so they see no problem.
Have you seen what microsoft is pushing on 11??
No. I once accidentally installed the update, but immediately returned to 10, when I saw how it looks. But I imagine, with some settings and add-ons I can make it look like 10.
The issue is not with the appearance. It’s the fact that microsoft keeps pushing AI into everything. The settings app is still shit and missing control panel functionality. There is more to say but these are the main issues afaik.
In addition to the front facing AI features, these days Windows 11 is less an operating system and more a ‘suck as much data about this person to train our AI models as we can get away with’.
Windows Recall is one of their AI solutions they’re pushing onto people which would screenshot everything on your system in order to assist users in searching through previous desktop interactions and whatnot.
Security researchers are highly against the rollout of this ‘feature’ as it uses AI and the previous betas have shown that Microsoft is incapable of ensuring the prevention of abuse from malicious users.
Ex: a user entering in their credit card information for an online transaction would have that information stored as an indexable/searchable piece of information by a malicious outsider.
Microsoft has yet to show competance in their abilities to prevent the creation of such a wide attack surface.
With the steam deck proving that Linux gaming was not only possible but easy, I could remove gaming as a reason to keep windows, which meant the only thing I actually wanted windows for was an Adobe subscription that I hadn’t used in over a year. With windows fighting me the whole time, Linux got out of my way and let me use my own device how I wanted to. Which by the way sounds like I’m using it for something complicated or specialized but I’m not, I need it for web browsing, gaming, and light photo editing, that’s about it.
So that’s the positive case to move away from windows. The other side is that Windows is actively hostile to me as a user. I don’t want or need copilot. For starters I don’t have the hardware to really take advantage of it, and I don’t want it using power unnecessarily. I don’t want office 365, I don’t want OneDrive, I don’t want another UI on top of the 5 other UI frameworks that exist in windows which only serve to make it harder to change things to what I want. I don’t want to sign in using a Hotmail account I made when I was 12 and haven’t touched in years. I don’t want windows telling Microsoft how I use my own device. There’s some cool stuff in windows 11 like WSL which is awesome for me as a dev in my day job, but it’s not enough to keep me in a system that, by design and direction, is trying to lock me into it.
Xbox app is another example, where my game controllers sometimes work and most of the time don’t. Sometimes there’s cross play with steam, sometimes not. Sometimes even installing the game doesn’t work and I have to re-download the entire game again. Just bafflingly bad and costs me more than steam ever has. Ridiculous.
Gaming is the main reason I own a pc. I understand it’s possible on Linux, but is it as easy as on Windows? Not to mention, that I pirate most of my games.
I am contemplating switching to Linux, but I am too afraid, that I will run into something I didn’t realize windows is necessary for.
There are some games that don’t work or don’t work as well. Some anti-cheat systems don’t work but the website protondb.com will tell you how compatible specific games are. For some people that’s a deal breaker and that’s ok, hopefully as adoption increases the situation will get better. I was disappointed to find out that vermintide 2 doesn’t work for example.
I have no idea on the pirating side.
Most of my games work right out of the box, and the ones that have problems are ones that I’d also have to fiddle with for more than a 1-minute check to ProtonDB are ones I’d have to fiddle with on Windows. However I also do not touch anything with online multiplayer or anticheat, and I know games with kernel-level anticheat tend to not handle Linux well on anything but a Steam Deck.
I swapped a PC I had mostly for gaming over to Linux. I’m having a pretty nice time.
As for piracy, I know pirated games that need to be emulated because they are originally Nintendo Switch games or something work well. No idea for pirated PC games.
Many can’t upgrade to 11 and don’t want to buy a new device. They’ll believe it’s their only option unless told otherwise. It’s not necessarily a “Win11 is bad” or “Linux/BSD is better” scenario, just a “to keep using your current device which you paid for less than a decade ago, do the following”.
Times are hard and people shouldn’t be forced to buy new hardware because of the current monopolistic software companies’s latest money making scheme, especially when their old one works perfectly fine and the environment is going to suffer.
As far as I can tell it’s mostly the TPM requirement and pushing more ads / AI nonsense.
You can easily avoid the latter by using the LTSC IoT version. I just bought a new (second hand) computer for TPM (my old one was very due for an upgrade).
With the IoT version it’s absolutely fine. Definitely an improvement over Windows 10. The only issue I’ve noticed is it doesn’t come with Windows Game bar or some nonsense so after you run games you’ll get a random dialog about there not being an app available to handle ms-gamelink URLs or something. You can just ignore it. I might fix it one day.
Pro version, install with English UK language and throwaway email account, disable the crap in the settings once install is completed, takes less time than to fiddle with Linux to make it work like you want it to…
I have a couple of reasons. The first and foremost is that I use windows for two things. Gaming (I dual boot windows and Bazzite for that to cover the few games I haven’t gotten to work), and work. My work laptop has windows 10 because the IT department can’t get some of the legacy software we rely on to do our jobs to work in 11. The compatibility layer originally wasn’t there and now it only works some of the time and every time there’s an update it breaks something. As a result we will likely be paying to continue to receive important security updates after 10 sunsets in October.
Additionally, some windows computers lose certain functionality when you install Linux (touchscreen compatibility, pen input compatibility etc. Can I update my personal surface pro to Linux? Yes. Will I? Unlikely. It’s way more likely that I’ll jailbreak it to force free security updates for the duration. I’ve run into way too much stuff I’ve had to have to IT department just straight up turn off in both 11 and 10. 11 is much worse for this though and subsequent updates have a habit of turning that stuff back on because MS wants that data.
So much new telemetry. So many new ads. So much random tracking. Swapping browsers to Edge. Copilot. Etc.
My fedora rig has secure-boot/tpm enabled. But getting that to work isn’t something the average windows user is going to do. The average windows user doesn’t ever open the command line in windows. And that’s the thing I think people in the Linux community need to understand. I grew up with DOS. I spent 30+ years using the command line. I have used windows since 3.0. I have a general understanding of how to get what I want out of windows. I’m learning to do that with Linux but I have been on Linux for like a year and a half. The learning curve when you are already very familiar with something else and have muscle memory for something else is staggering. And I can fully understand why it might be exceptionally confusing and unintuitive for someone who’s never had to use a terminal ever.
The fact is, most computer devices are phones. They use apps. There is some overlap in that with windows, but the plug and play nature of how these people are used to doing things is just as important to this conversation as just about ever other point.
Windows even pops up “helpful” tips and tricks because they know that people aren’t windows savvy. I personally hate them but I’m not the average windows user.
I’d also like to point out that windows had the audacity to change the design language and somehow make a usable tablet environment worse in windows 11 in a bit to be more macOS-like and I personally really really hate that as well. I have my desktop and start menu set up in a way I like it and windows 11 completely ruins that and in my case makes things harder for me because I am fighting muscle memory. It’s egregious to have to pay for the privilege of changing my start menu or task bar. I shouldn’t have to go in and doctor what apps are allow during start up. I shouldn’t have to turn off OneDrive or office 365. I shouldn’t have to turn off telemetry or ads. This is a device I purchased and the OS is not supposed to spy on me.
Just started the switch to fedora. It’s actually really good. I played minecraft with my spouse and after turning off mouse acceleration, it felt great. My favorite games are all on steam. Only things that are rough is professional software. Also, my $250 elgato capture card doesn’t support Linux. Windows is definitely going to need to stick around for me.
It’s been a hot minute since I’ve used a linux distro for personal use, but I’ve got a laptop that probably needs to move over. That being said, I would still LIKE to play some windows exclusive games on that machine. Is wine still the go to for fudging compatibility? How good is it? Will I be able to download windows only steam games with relatively low effort for such uses?
There’s also Lutris, https://lutris.net/, which uses wine and other software underneath, but with a nice GUI and a lot of scripts to further make playing your games on Linux easier.
The DIY install guide is a joke.
I mean, it is very “broad strokes” but correct. Ultimately though I don’t think their goal is to get people to just do it themselves. It seems like their bigger goal is connecting people in the community to people that want to make the switch to help smooth out the transition.
hey i’m trying to get my parents moved over to mint :)
Moved my mother a few days ago (LMDE). Printer too. Took about an hour.
Most of it was getting apps setup, moving pictures over, and making sure she was already logged into things like Facebook so she did not have to remember the passwords after I left.
Her biggest complaint has been that her friends email addresses do mot automatically pop-up in Thunderbird. They will once she has sent or received email from them. So this will pass.
I moved mine over about 2 years ago.
Only issue was getting the printer to work… Took a few hours.
I think what many people really need to feel confident switching to linux is an expert who is willing to guide them through it and offer support.
I’m actively trying to do that, and it’s not working. All my normie friends are either ignoring the problem or planning on buying new pcs with win11
Windows stopped at 7.
10 is perfectly great, 7 was not bad at all.
10 is perfectly great
Nope.
Ok
Good luck, you’re going to need it.
Linux is very user friendly. Windows 11 with debloat is also a good option. Not worth sticking to windows if they won’t be using any microsoft specific development tools like visual studio or be playing heavy games. A casual gamer won’t be troubled on Linux.
