Even the rumor of this makes Valve’s focus on Linux seem that much smarter.

I've never used Linux but if Microsoft goes subscription I'm out and I'll be learning Linux.

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I've been meaning to install Linux on my primary gaming PC but haven't yet due to laziness. This would 100% get me to pull the trigger if/when I ever had to upgrade/reinstall.

To start, I don’t think it’ll be a “subscribe or else” type deal. My assumption would be something like a forced S mode unless you subscribe.

Second, people won’t jump right away. To start, word will get around and they’ll simply not update. Then, when it comes time to buy a new computer, the average user will be possibly swayed to look at entry level MB Airs (They often go on sale for like $750) or Chromebooks.

The people who will get really pissed will be power users and gamers who will be forced to shell out money to get back features they had in previous versions of the OS.

Yeah the only people whose minds this will change are agnostic techies

Yup, Chromebooks are already cheap and pretty intuitive, I think this will bump their sales a lot.

Won't matter to Microsoft at all. You'll use your Chromebook to connect your Windows 365 Cloud PC . They'll add it to the Microsoft Family Plan, same one that has MS Office in it, for free when its introduced and then slowly raise the price as people get embedded into it.

Gaming? You'll buy the WinBook Ultra that can handle streaming gaming or buy an Xbox.

Welcome to the future, it'll be here in 10 years or less.

And tablets, which most people seem to be using these days.

Caveat: if the software you need is supported. Unfortunately that's the major reason I haven't switched

Does that include the Miley Cirus operating system?

And a lot of linux programs take inspiration from Microsoft's design because they're the norm. When you think of a word processor you think of Word, same goes for all of Office 365 actually.

Now that's just some bullshit and you know it

Remove the bloatware with a free program like ShutUp10++, and Windows is a fine OS. Linux may very well be better still, but better enough to go through the effort of switching over, reinstalling everything, relearning everything, finding alternatives to programs, etc.? I doubt it. Not for me at least.

LibreOffice works at least as well as Word on its own terms, the problem is how Microsoft deliberately breaks interoperability so you can't reliably share the documents you create on Libre with people who are going to open them with Word.

I wish. Try editing a document with tables.

LibreOffice is fine if all you are doing is writing a Dear Princess Celestia letter, but when you actually start doing advanced things, the jankiness of LibreOffice starts to become wasted effort. If I have to spend more time fighting the program than actually doing work, it's worth the money for Office. Especially at $70/year for M365, which is roughly 1-3 hours of work depending on what job and such.

Since most companies are moving their tools to web-based versions, the switch will be even easier.

Office already has extensive een versions. They're not entirely there yet, but good enough if you don't need advanced functionality.

Like garbage. That’s why I haven’t invested in the time. I write large documents and do lot of research for publishing. As such learning a new tool is a pain in the ass

Unfortunately the difference is huge. It's not just the cost of learning a new tool, it's that 10% of really important features are not there. For me for example it was the ability to apply a theme to an existing presentation in Impress. Well in the corporate world, it's mandatory.

Using Linux daily since 99, as my only personal OS since 2013, and still struggling with the office alternatives.

might as well be that they change their licensing model for businesses to some sort of Subscription. The resale of volume keys has been a pain in their butt for a long time.

Too true brother. I went from decades to years to months to weeks to, ah fuck… tomorrow?

They haven’t even gotten Office to subscription-only yet

Getting closer every day. Having a M365 subscription for Office is now the normal way that SMB and larger businesses work with it and at home Microsoft's "Family Plan" that includes Office has been doing nothing but growing since they introduced it. Last I checked they were over 50 Million subscribers.

Windows as an OS will eventually be going subscription. You'll pay the licensing to unlock features like the Windows "S" mode model or you'll pay the licensing in order to access a Windows 365 Cloud PC that's part of your family plan.

Most home users will have hardware similar to a Chromebook. "PC" gaming will be done via streaming or you'll just buy an Xbox.

Welcome to the future.

I have two main concerns with switching. I may eventually switch when these get better.

1. My mouse shortcuts (Logitech is fully integrated with discord allowing a mute toggle that actually bypasses any keypresses, don’t know if Linus has this as Logitech software on Mac used to be awful)
2. FFXIV mods: reshade, quick launcher (does work with Linux it says), and ACT (which on windows does a packet capture to parse your damage and has overlays to show that)

I was just reading that ACT doesn’t work will with overlays on Linux. Here’s hoping though! I can’t for the day when I have a solid free/open source Linux desktop running all my games. One where I’m not afraid to update in fear of breaking. One where I don’t need to use docker to host Overseerr and nginx. One where I have the control like I (mostly) do on my work laptop.

One day….

Yeah, except the Steam Deck

aaand he replies with a gaming rant. Most users arent children nobody gives a fuck about steam and le wholesome gaben chungus. We want excel and word. Witcher 3 is not a selling point. You live in a teenager reddit bubble.

I have the capacity and the knowledge but not the motivation.

It’s going to be more because the younger generations don’t think they need desktop operating systems

We're already there. The Millennials, and every Generation after them, by and large don't give two shits about the Operating System, they're used to working in an App Driven ecosystem…just like your kid.

It legit could be. When Win10 support ends you have three options:

1. Buy a new PC with the required TPM chip.
2. Bypass the check in the Win11 installer and hope the OS functions properly after install and going forward.
3. Install a fully supported Linux that's optimized for older hardware.

None of those three options are easy, and Linux is the only option that's free and guaranteed to work. Although to be fair most computers made after 2018 have the TPM chip, and so I don't know how many folks will actually be running 7+ year old hardware at that point. It's probably more likely to cause a jump in PC sales more than Linux adoption.

militant vegans

Well, then don't. But don't be surprised when things keep getting worse.

They don’t use it because there’s absolutely no need for them to do so when Windows is a fantastic OS for their needs

The issue has never been whether Windows is a good OS or not. Almost anything you can do with Linux you can also do with Windows[1]. The issue has always been the risk that Microsoft could pull the rug from under your feet and the fact that there's nothing you can do about it as long as you're on their platform. You can see all the bullshit that people have had to deal with in the past 10 years as the result of people being comfortable with taking that risk - shitty upgrades, telemetry, ads, and now this. And nobody even knows what other kinds of bullshit they'll try to pull in the future.

None of this to say that you have to choose one platform or another. Everything is a calculated risk. Use Windows if that's what you want, but by this point, it's clear that you will have to continue with putting up with more and more of this abusive behavior from Microsoft if that's the choice that you're making.

[1]: This is somewhat starting to change though. These days, for a lot of programming- and data science-related tasks, Linux is starting to pull further and further ahead and Windows is becoming more and more unusable.

For me new Windows releases grow more annoying, slow and counter-intuitive. Switching PCs at work made it mandatory that I went through all 'bad' Windows, like Vista and 8, now on w10. Sure, XP-7-w10 weren't\aren't that bad, but they all feel worse than the previous one. Nevertheless, I could've sticked to one of them, get used to, no problem. But they all get outdated, can't use X RAM, don't have DirectX N, aren't supported with security updates and are blocked from installing latest software.

Configuring it was very limited too. In W10 I can't call TotalCMD or other file manager instead of win expoler from other apps. It eats RAM like candies for no reason. Touchscreen interfaces with empty spaces and no right click are everywhere. Undoing telemetry and defender requires know-how or executing scripts, otherwise it's bloated. Start up times aren't the best too.

Linux is a headache and it's still far from a thing regular PC users would trust without a doubt to handle their usual tasks. The same state Windows slowly comes to, imho. But without being free and insanely customizable. The only things that I need to emulate are superproprietary DRMed products with no alternatives. They are a minority. Most users don't need them, so they have one less argument against switching.

That's my personal account tho. I'm a bit asurprised you like windows as a home system, so I'd want to hear about your positive experience with it if you have some outstanding moments with it.

When was the last time you used Linux on the desktop? It has come a long way and is getting better every month

People don't use Windows because it's a "fantastic" OS for their needs. It very evidently is not "fantastic" (or anywhere close) for anyone's needs but Microsoft's. People use Windows because it comes bundled with their PCs due to Microsoft's monopolistic malpractices, and because they can't get bothered to figure out how to get rid of that bloatware / malware (or, they would get rid of it if possible, but are held hostage by the software — or malware, e.g., Adobe — they need to work only working on Windows, again due to said monopolistic malpractices).

A Linux user watching someone use (and bitch) about Windows is like watching someone right click to copy & paste.

If you know of a vast improvement, why would you keep the benefits of better things to yourself?

Think about how often Windows users bitch about Windows. Think about how many zillions of things they bitch about and how many new things they find to bitch about all the time. Think about how many Windows users say things like, "I love this OS!" or, "This OS is so cool! Look what I can do!"

Now think about how many Linux users you see bitching about Linux. Think about how many are super excited about it and how many instantly become, "fanatics" practically overnight.

There's a reason

Even when you’re a bit more savvy it’s easy to configure Windows to your liking without all the bloat and spying

Bootlicker spotted.

This has not been true since at least win10

Try stopping start or search services from pinging daddy sataya microshit and see how that shit works for you

Also, they revert privacy settings after updates.

There was nothing accidental about Linus. He did it on purpose, the system very clearly told him not to.

And Proton works much better than you imply. I don't know about their new "tiered" rating, but 30% games get Platinum rating (top 1000 most popular titles by player count). Besides that 45% have Gold, and nowadays more often than not that means the game simply just works.
Trying to say "oh, but it doesn't always work perfect!" is just nonsense.
How many games work perfectly without any issues on Windows?

And please don't say anything about "UI polish" on Windows when it can't even keep all its UI consistent - it'd be hilarious if it wasn't so sad.

And Twitch… almost every game in top #10 works perfectly without any troubles, so what's your point exactly?

I only use my over speed PC for one thing. Gaming. I've looked into going to Linux and shuddered at the immense trouble trying to make it work for me. I'm with you in that I have the knowledge, having used it for a couple decades, but I just don't care to put myself through mountains of bullshit for an idea.

I also do programming and am fairly used to the terminal, and I still have a headache when thinking of going back to linux, because even when I want to do something as simple as watching netflix on firefox I had to go through a maze of troubleshooting via the terminal to get the correct packages installed. I can't imagine what someone who isn't tech savvy who tries to switch to linux would do.

The user experience on linux and its distributions just aren't there for the everyday user, and until they are, windows will always be the preferable choice because it actually works. You don't have to end up having a dispute with it on some arbitrary software download because it doesn't quite like it, and have to wrangle through many software alternatives that aren't always available or even anywhere near feature ready because they aren't available on the platform.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

when Linus tried to install Steam on Pop_OS.

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Linus fucked up his os by entering the command that prompted him "are you absolutely sure this is what you want to do? if you don't know, then it isnt." and presed yes. windows does the same when doing a factory restore, if you click "yes i'm sure" then that's on you. yes, ideally steam worked and he wouldn't have had to try to fix it, but that kind of thing happens all the time on all software, linux just gives you the option of fixing it yourself instead of going "welp i'm not using that".

this fix-it yourself mode of functionning is really what sets it apart from other OSes, for examp,e if you have a windows problem good luck finding anything beyond "have you tried dism /online?", which by the way is also a console command and is like the very first step in all windows troubleshooting.

as for gaming, I daily drive debian and i'm not really encountering any setbacks beyond the obvious "this game developpers is incapable of making a linux anti-cheat so it won't run on there at all" problem, or its cousin "this game developper is incapable of going into their EAC dashboard and click 'enable linux support'" (yes, it is that easy, i have done it personally).

Also worth mentionning that Linus is accused by ex-employees of misconduct, and is generally an asshat when it comes to technology despite being a technology reviewer.

This is actually funny because I installed steam on pop os without issues. But that said, sometimes it freeze my whole pc and I have to hard reboot it (idk why)

edit: I don't understand the down votes, it was supposed to be (as stated) funny and not insulting

unless you're just naturally adventurous like me

LMAO

People like you are the reason I haven't tried Linux.

I’m not up my own ass enough to proudly declare myself “naturally adventurous,” but I have stayed at a few Holiday Inn Expresses in other towns before. I use Debian and Ubuntu somewhat regularly, but mostly use Windows and MacOS in daily life, and I don’t understand where the “sinking ship” metaphor comes in. Microsoft will attempt this recurring-revenue monetization, and it will either be successful, or it won’t; Windows won’t go away if it isn’t. Otherwise, Apple prints money from its beautifully made consumer-friendly hardware, which also features shockingly good in-house silicon.

No ships are sinking. This isn’t some grand narrative where Linux awaits us all at the end of personal-computing history.