Comment on Microsoft killed Win 10 support to rob you of your rights. Fight back by installing Linux.
BromSwolligans@lemmy.world 4 days ago
This is how I feel more and more. I do IT stuff for non-technical folks on the side and they’re just squirming with these machines that can’t upgrade to Win11. I dump Linux Mint on there, and they run like a dream, even at 10 or 11 years old. In some cases, the RAM cannot be upgraded beyond the 4 or 8GB it shipped with, and even so, they can watch streaming video, they can video conference…you know, of course, they can do office work in LibreOffice. It’s a fucking joke that Microsoft is trying to lie to them—to all of us—and say their computers are no good any longer. And between the homelabbing I’ve been doing lately and all the machines I’ve been rehabbing for people, it just reminds me how much I enjoy using Linux. Even if it can be a pain in the ass. Even if it can be cryptic. It feels like honest-to-god computing in a way macOS hasn’t felt like for a long time, and Windows no longer even resembles.
I use a Mac laptop because I always have, and I appreciate the convenience of the ecosystem (AirPods snapping right to the machine, iMessage letting me text from a desktop app, and so forth) but just because macOS’s descent into enshittification is slower doesn’t mean it’s any less noticeable. I want a Framework laptop so damn bad, so I at least have the option to daily Linux. Dual-booting on an M-series Mac is just a little too inelegant. I want something with good support and flexibility, where the maintainers aren’t fighting an upward battle to make a black box transparent, you know?
Anyway, I really believe this is “the year of the Linux desktop” as they’ve been saying, and I have become that annoying part of my friend group who won’t stop recommending it. Seems like every week someone bitches about Windows 11, and every time, I dump three more articles or videos about how 90% of games work, and some even work better on Linux, or whatever, to try and tempt them out of their Windows-shaped box. We’ll see if it ever takes. But we know this much for sure: Windows is only getting worse.
altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
We haven’t seen the worst of it. Most people won’t care about lack of security updates unless nagged by MS directly. What damages older platforms worse is incompatible apps, especially Chromium-based browsers and Electron-based apps, and therefore individual websites that block outdated versions.
If you are to join a chat with your boss in MS Teams, you need to make it work. That won’t fly on older versions of Win10, neither on previous OSes. But their service’s web version, probably limited, works as long as Firefox keeps working on aging systems, while Chrome gave up a long ago, and may abandon Win10 too if they’d like to.
When that would happen, when there would be a popular piece of software requiring a non-negotiable switch, that would pronounce Win10 a dying platform. That may be more of a streamlining choice on devs’ side rather than an obvious necessity, but who cares? If baby me had Steam or a favorite meme page stop working, I could’ve cried to my parents until they fix it with money.
Like in marketing, you don’t sell the product itself, you sell vibes, benefits of ownership, not wheels but miles. Win11 should become a choice of ultimate convinience, usability, comfort - compared to erroring out Win10 PCs. This needs enough momentum, and the end of Chromium on W10 is the best thing that would happen to modern MS targeting existing users.