As a long-term user of the Linux Desktop, with only occasional interaction with Microsoft products, I miss some of the trends related to Windows and other MS products.
I was shocked to learn that 2025 saw the rise in adoption of the Linux Desktop from its long stable ~1% to an insurgent ~5%. Then I started noticing many commercial acquaintances who had long been hide-bound MS acolytes adopting Linux. And more recently, gamers, via SteamOS.
When pinged about it, most say Windows 11 is the last straw.
Again, what Windows I have I run in virtual machines, and the specific tech I use for that is deliberately incompatible with Win11, so I haven’t been forced off Win10. (Support is not really a concern in my environment.) So I have zero experience with Win11 and its supposed miseries. I’ve been vaguely aware of Cortana AI getting pushed into every aspect Windows usage. Yeah, that would tick me off.
But I wasn’t really aware of the forced update issue until today, when Open Source hero Eric S. Raymond posted:
Hmmm. I’ve long claimed that industrial use of Windows should be considered engineering malpractice, but I’m now certain.
“It looks to me like nobody over there [Microsoft] is thinking strategically about customer retention anymore.”
That is typical of the endpoint of a monopoly – whether it is Microsoft or the EU. The punters now in charge (who are mere greasy-pole climbers, not the hard-charging independent-thinking founders) can’t imagine that their customers would leave them. Short-term thinking – it is what has killed the West.
And those Microsoft punters have a point – what would happen today to any IT guy in a major Western corporation who proposed saving money by dumping Microsoft? But times will change – they always do.
I’ve heard that the EU is strongly against win 11 also that South Korea developed their own version of Linux that they are using on all government computers or will be shortly.
There are countless reports of corporations, businesses etc that are dumping or refusing to use win 11
Shortly I will be switching to a version of Linux myself, heck it can’t be as hard as originally learning to work with DOS
Eggspurt,
But leaving long used and loved programs behind is a hard thing.
The worst loss will be Photoshop 7, yes there is GIMP instead. But when you get used to something it’s hard to switch.
My son, on the other hand, his first computer was a TI/99-4a, uses a keyboard so fast that it scares me. He’s what some may call a Linux power user.
I believe he’s just getting even. When I gave him that old, but then brand new, TI and said here’s the book, ask me when you can’t find an answer, he never asked. Now he dropped off a version of Linux on a fast thumb drive and also gave me a terabyte solid state drive saying there is another slot in your motherboard, make it a dual boot.
Not telling me how, just do it.
LOL, he’s getting even for that TI computer that I gave him many years ago.
Well, I now have Linux Mint installed on my computer.
My son helped me set up a dual boot. Windoz 10 and Linux Mint
Yes it seems to have a windows-like GUI, but it will take some getting used to.
I can access my windows drives to “read” but not to “write”.
I still have to find a GUI file transfer program. I loaded GIMP and that will be a whole 'nuther experience other than Photoshop 7.
This should be fixable. Back when I was dual-booting, Linux had full access to all Windows stuff. Windows could not (still, I think) handle Linux stuff.
It may be a hidden piece of crap that microsoft had the audacity to sneak into windows 10 under the guise of protection, or it could be the file system.
I don’t know yet, presently I have NTFS on my two storage drives, (1T each).
I have about 70% usage on each of those drives, so it will take some shuffling to move files off one or the other to set up a different file system. The windows drive has about 66% free. Still there is a lot of “garbage” that I no longer need and can be deleted to slim down storage.
Got Linux Mint to access my E & F drives in windows, I had to turn on sharing.
So with Linux Mint I could save a text file to the drives.
But for some reason it didn’t save it to my C drive anywhere when I said into my desktop.
Maybe I made a mistake, I’ll try it again…
If only today’s activists had to power their local computer generated Native Stupidity (NS - rather than Artificial Intelligence, AI) e-indignation with such a power source, civilization might yet be saved.
