I've seen some people saying that there's no way Microsoft is this stupid. Some really, really, really obviously bad choices (see: Wizards of the Coast's OGL debacle) have been made because MBAs got greedy and convinced themselves it would be fine. I find it hard to believe that Microsoft would fuck up this badly, but it's not out of the spectrum of possibility. What I think is more likely is that this is one of those 'leaks' where they're testing the public reaction, like when Wizards leaked the changes to the OGL via journalists. Hopefully (or not, if you're a Linux fan) Microsoft plays it smarter than Wizards, because Wizards saw the immense public backlash, gave the sorriest corporate half apology ever, and then proceeded to double down, and it blew up in their face big time.

They are doing the same with Windows that they did with Office. Win12 will come as either one time purchase or subscription based but over the course of 10 years they'll push harder and harder on getting people into the subscription version. Once it has enough uptake, and it will get there, they will then start pushing the "Why run it on local hardware when you can put it in our cloud and access it from anywhere?".

They're already doing the Virtual Desktop thing in both M365 and Azure now so it'll be a pretty easy transition when comes.

And that will be the end of me using Windows for anything aside from AutoCAD & ArcGIS.

It's Linux time then.

Honestly OneDrive is actually very good as far as cloud storage platforms go. It just works. I paid for a subscription for a few years.

But starting around the 1000th time Microsoft tried to install even more bloatware I started looking for alternatives. For the low low price of "spend a few minutes learning about Tailscale" and buying a few extra hard drives, I've got 24TB of storage. My most important stuff gets encrypted locally and backed up to B2. I use Immich to manage my photos, so now I dropped my Google Drive subscription as well. Still on the fence about Nextcloud's office suites but LibreOffice works great.

The only reason I still use Win11 is because gaming on Linux still has some issues with the games I play.

Proton will be ready by then.

My desktop PC kicked the bucket after 10 years a few months back and I ended up using my Steam Deck as my primary computer for about a month. In that time I learned that Linux isn't so bad.

If forced to either pay a subscription for Windows or switch to Linux the choice seems simple for me at this point.

Yeah, I'll just get Linux.

the only reason why I still using windows is gaming. give me a platform where I can use steam and gog and I will not be touching windows ever again if not in a professional capacity.

Fuck subscription models

And then Linux will finally get the attention it has always deserved.

This is great for linux, but I think many laptops come with a protected BIOS that won't allow you to boot other OS's what do you guys do in this case? Also, correct me if I'm wrong!

I don't really know how your gonna sell people on this exactly. Like people will just stop buying laptops. The average person just buys a laptop at walmart in the desired size, from any brand. They don't even really think about windows. I just don't really see this working for anyone. What will end up happening is Chromebooks will overtake the laptop market if microsoft goes all in on this.

This will be the first day in years I will try to make gaming work on Linux once again.

I hardly think MS is going this route. It maybe for AI stuff they are pushing in the OS and not the OS itself

@billiam0202

Windows is nothing but a nightmare. It's privacy invasive, uses too much resources, breaks 24 7, has a boring UI, limited customization, more susceptible to viruses than any other OS, etc...

People should just switch over to Linux IMO.

Ahoy Mateys 🏴‍☠️