They are envious of the Google and Apple walled gardens/cashcows and are now determined to turn Windows into one.
Windows is no longer a product for users, the users of Windows are the product for Microsoft to be shoved into the Azure sales funnel.
2017 called. It wants Windows S Mode back.
Needless to say it still isn't very popular. But this has been around for <checks notes> 8 years now
Having to use an account to get apps from app store (Apple) vs. having to use an account to install and use the OS in the first place (Microsoft) = not even a a competition
Which is perplexing, because this is essentially the opposite strategy than what gave windows value to begin with.
They can play the long game.
(1) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/hardware-...
Perhaps they think it doesn’t matter once everything is in the cloud.
God I hate what this industry has become.
Normal mainstream users can't stay on very old operating systems like Windows 7 because they'll eventually be forced to install newer software that's not compatible with it. Outside actors other than Microsoft force os upgrades.
- buy a new printer and it only has drivers for newer os like Windows 10/11 and later
- need for installing newer software like latest versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Adobe suite, TurboTax 2024, etc. They don't install on Win7. For Windows 7, the last version of Chrome was January 2023. Last version of Firefox was August 2024.
So setting aside commercial apps like Adobe, TurboTax, etc. -- why can't a user just stay with old version of Mozilla Firefox that's compatible with Win7 and turn off updates?!? Because bank websites like JP Morgan will block the user with an error "You need to upgrade your web browser" because the SSL/TLS encryption algorithms in old Firefox versions are obsolete.
Deliberately trying to freeze your computer on Windows 7 or Windows XP means relegating it into a "museum piece" that becomes less and less useful for practical real-world tasks. That's ok for an isolated machine that runs old video games but no good for online banking.
The only segments left targeting Windows as a platform are games, replacements/extensions to the OS tools, and a bunch of legacy .NET LOB apps. And since the Steam Deck and clones, Wine/Proton are (very) slowly becoming the actual target for games rather than Windows.
If I want to use a decent OS, I can do most of my development on Fedora or Arch or some other Linux distro at my workplace.
For proprietary stuff that won't work there, honestly, Windows 11 is not that bad as far as Windows go. I do not get ads, I use a local account without problems and I can do development actually decently with PowerShell, vcpkg, VS Code which Microsoft offers for free and which work on all platforms.
TL;DR: There are hills with a much better view to die on.
And no one on this forum really needs app store when homebrew exists
But I expect the new leadership will not put much value on this. I imagine it'd play out that first to "to enhance the security and improve the UX" they'll start a shoving a bunch of nagging dialogs in the users face "this app is not safe" etc.
Then they'll add a flag to enable "unsafe mode" where the user can run unverified / unsigned code.
Then finally they'll just nuke the flag.
After all requiring that the ecosystem with the most "important" apps such as their own office suite, slack, adobe etc. grind out new versions with digital signing is not out of alignment with these companies incentives and development cycles either.
In fact I would not find it surprising if these companies would actually be approached by Microsoft to participate in any such scheme and get offered some kind of "discount" or reward (whether it's app store discount or whatever else) and these companies would only see it strengthening their own moats against any possible competition.
And I'm talking about the consumer use case, not the corporate.
Also, on more libre software, the community can release LibreOffice and VLC builds like crazy. Ditto with Sumatra PDF, Gimp, Krita...
Consider how much has changed since the first 25 years of MSFT. Both in business and in life in general.
I completely removed Windows from all of my personal notebooks and workstations.
>Windows is no longer a product for users, the users of Windows are the product for Microsoft to be shoved into the Azure sales funnel.
So true. I won't be running win11 outside of a VM and anything but win11 IoT. You know where to find it...
- Printers: the W7 cohort probably overlaps with users of classic HP Laserjets (I know it's not just me!).
- Chrome: Supermium adds W7 support back into the latest(ish) version.
- SSL/TLS: does such an issue exist on W7? It's exactly what pushed my mother (at the age of about 65, and hating having to learn anything new) to upgrade to 11 from XP a year or so ago. I do all my Internet banking on W7, via several different banks as I often move around chasing the best interest rates, and never had a problem with any of them. (Vivaldi, Supermium, Firefox 115ESR.)
- Some software such as Adobe XD: yeah, unfortunately it's not supported. Depends how much it's needed I suppose. I may be forced to "upgrade" sometime this year but I'd really rather not.
It's not perfect, it sucks, but it's better
If that worked on Linux, I would not longer need Windows at all...
It’s only a matter of time before Microsoft forces everyone with local accounts to switch to a Microsoft Account just to access their own machines. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the future, local accounts are completely disabled, except maybe on specialized enterprise versions of the OS.
I'm exhausted by the anti-consumer behavior of American companies, constantly restricting user choice and access, undermining privacy, and hiking up prices, all in the name of "profit".
Early on I consulted ProtonDB to see if my games would run, but honestly now I don't even look at it any more. While YMMV depending on the games you play, I haven't encountered really any major bugs and zero crashes. The most I found was some strange shadow texture rendering artifacting in Baldur's Gate 3, but it was contained to a particular part of a particular map.
A decade ago it was kind of rough, but now? I am never going back to Windows for gaming. Playing games on Linux is light-years better than what it used to be. If you're curious but haven't tried it because you had bad experiences in the past, I'd encourage anyone to give it another go.
Just a note to readers who are interested in this: some games in your Steam library may still not work with Proton, but the ones that do work should have rather few issues. (I play exclusively on a Steam Deck so “should” is in reference to the variance in hardware among bespoke machines.)
And people will buy it. Because "general purpose computing" is a niche feature for nerds. (Astronaut 2: Always has been.) And it presents enough problems and extra work that most consumers woyld gladly give it up. Most consumers just want something thet can do Facebook/Excel/Spotify/Netflix/games with.
Instead Microsoft is trying to upsell cloud storage, backup and ad-free email (along with Office apps) with Microsoft 365. And on the biz side they’re getting into the biz of offering managed patched online Windows VDIs, kind of like Citrix.
Also Microsoft Store-only Windows is a deal killer for Windows in businesses. A lot of specialised LOB (line of business) apps run on Windows and the Store is a non-starter for those. And in home contexts there’s a bunch of legacy apps that people keep Windows for, dropping support for them will mean switching to ChromeOS or macOS just got easier.
So yeah — I fully agree they’ll absolutely shove you in into the Azure or M365 sales funnel, and individual users no longer feel like a priority. But non-store apps aren’t quite dead yet.
I too planning to use a gaming centric distro for my next gaming PC build. The horseshit they've been pushing at me on 10 has been atrocious. The lie that 10 would be the last. Injecting pages into Chrome. Windows acts more and more like literal malware.
Microsoft.
They can reverse their decision at any time. Inasmuch as you are able to boot Linux on your PC, it's only because Microsoft deigns to allow it.
I am glad they've added bots years ago which made me stop playing so I do not miss it.
Microsoft does have the leverage in this case, as long as folks want to continue using Windows.
Microsoft forced Win10 down people's throats. I had all of my machines Windows Update processes turned off and somehow it STILL got onto my systems. I suspect Skype was the mechanism through which Microsoft did this, as they owned Skype then and I still used it.
Other operating systems could still collaborate with manufacturers to have their key be trusted.
I don't find that the distribution makes that much of a difference?
I just use Arch Linux, and install all the programs (gaming centric or otherwise) that I need when I need them. I guess I'm lucky, because the Steam Deck's distribution is based on Arch Linux, but I used it before it was cool.
I suspect the main differences between the distributions is what you get by default, and that can be a huge factor in terms of convenience?
I know a fair bit about OS internals but especially when I'm gaming I want to play rather than read and follow technical docs.
Sorry, not sorry.
I have no idea why people even consider updating, must be some really weird case.
There is zero new value in the latest Windows versions, just plain nothing new, there is really no reason to switch.
Devs don't test on low spec machines and MS fired the team that maintained the testing PC zoo a decade ago.