Pretty sure it's just that Windows is horribly broken, privacy-invading, ad-ridden malware disguised as an operating system. I swear it seems like nobody at Microsoft not even once have asked the actual users for what they would like to see in the OS.
The video takes this one step further, and it has nothing to do with being 'out of touch' or something. The speaker is arguing there is a macro trend of pushing us towards agentic interactions instead of the UI components we're used to. Then it can track, tune and control everything we do, thanks to all the telemetry back and forth.
I wish people would engage with the content a bit. It's a huge claim (and scary).
> The speaker is arguing there is a macro trend of pushing us towards agentic interactions instead of the UI components we're used to.
This trend is not even limited to Windows.
We saw it begin years ago with Google etc gradually reducing the quality of search results. Then ChatGPT etc arrive shortly thereafter, and people are led to conclude "it works so much better than traditional search." Hard to believe these two events are unrelated.
Microsoft has a handful big clients - Dell, Lenovo, HP being the top three. They are the ones that make Windows be the default operating system on everyone's computers and they need to be happy, not the person who buys the computer. When the computer becomes unusable, they'll just get another from the same brands and everyone, except the user, are happy.
Corporations don't run Windows. They run Outlook, Excel, and Teams. Windows and generic PCs (or thin clients and VDIs) is just the cheapest way to achieve that goal.
> They are the ones that make Windows be the default operating system on everyone's computers
I've got to disagree. Macs are a fantastic option as long as the software needed to do actual work is available. That's the real bottleneck and it's not something Dell, Lenovo, or HP have any power over.
They still ship a lot more computers than Apple. For most of the world, Apple is a niche product. I use it, and I love them, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking corporations will start buying Mac Minis to replace their desktops and thin clients anytime soon.
That… does not follow. Corporations simply aren't going to start buying Macs for all of their millions of rank-and-file corporate drones. Even if they wanted, and they don't, they're tied to the Windows ecosystem in all sorts of ways, even though the software lives on someone else's computer these days.
Microsoft is declaring all users are now corporate drones. All your activity will be tied to your Microsoft account. All your files, images, and regular screenshots of your PC will be sucked into OneDrive. If your mouse has not moved in five minutes a manager will be notified.
Nah. I think the problem is that windows and macOS did everything users wanted them to do about 10-15 years ago. Everything since then has been lipstick on a pig.
If windows were a building, they need to stop tacking on more rooms like it’s a gaudy McMansion. If they really wanna keep working on it, work to make what’s already there more beautiful. Optimise. Reduce the install size. Clean up some of the decades of tech debt. Unify the different generations of UI toolkits. Write documentation. Port security critical parts to rust, where appropriate. Refine, don’t reinvent.
> did everything users wanted them to do about 10-15 years ago.
Certainly not; not by a long shot. Besides, most users don't even understand the potential of software. But why bother improving it if you still make money shipping crap?
Users want a one time payment of $150, for a 50 million LoC software product, and then get 10 years of support.
Everyone here slinging mud, while getting paid out of the SaaS pot. Would windows be a better product if it was user focused but cost $40/mo? From Microsoft's POV it would probably kill numbers.
Used to be that people who bought the OS were the customer. Now just like everything else these days, they're the product. And the OS still isn't even free.
Plus it's hard to buy a computer without paying the MS tax, unless you build one yourself.
That's an issue I would like to see legislated! In fact, in my country there is a law that prohibits bundled purchases: it's just that the authorities are not tech savvy enough to see it when it pertains to computers and Windows.
I'm being slightly absurd here since you need some sort of firmware to simply start up the computer and install an operating system, but here is my point: to most people, the operating system is part of the computer. The computer is simply an expensive brick without it. On top of that, a lot of the negativity towards bundling Windows originates from Microsoft's past monopolistic practices[1]. We certainly don't hear many people criticizing the bundling of macOS or iOS on Apple products or Android/Chrome OS on Android devices or Chromebooks. (There may be people who want to load alternative operating systems on these devices, but that is different from criticizing the bundling of the OS.)
[1] Is Microsoft forcing hardware vendors to install Windows even a thing these days?
It makes sense, if manufacturer provides support for Linux on the same laptop SKU. But that's very rarely the case. So selling laptop without OS seems like selling half-working product. When you're buying a car, it comes with a lot of software. ECU software, multimedia software (sometimes it's Windows CE) and so on.
I saw laptops selling with FreeDOS but realistically speaking I think that majority of these laptops end up with pirated Windows, so all it provides is increasing level of piracy.
Ideally laptop should provide a choice between Linux and Windows on the first boot. And easy way to buy Windows license if user chooses it.
In a couple years you won't have to bother with that. The device will connect to the ID chip embedded in your body when you're born. And this will be a one-time hard-wired coupling for that device when it is first turned on.
I often wonder whether anyone at Microsoft actually uses Windows as their daily OS, and if they do, how have they not noticed what a sack of shit it is? And then I think, well if they were using linux or macOS as their daily OS, they'd definitely notice what a sack of shit Windows is. The only possible answer at the end of this is that they know what a sack of shit it is but don't care because nobody at Microsoft has any taste, conscience or values.
Windows was fiercely hated for a long time for being extremely buggy, low quality, high price, weak security (a later concern), and Microsoft’s general anti-consumer and anti-competitive practices.
Things improved slightly for a while and maybe the generation of Mac/linux using tech workers never suffered through the worst of it, but Microsoft seems to be back on track with their old ways.
Microsoft cleaned up when they got hit with antitrust and then started feeling a bit of competition when operating under consent decree. That's all "behind" them now and the Google settlement put antitrust to bed.
Yah, a 180 would actually be a good thing, but I guess it depends on your reference point. Like people, the analogy breaks when tortured. I like yours better overall :)
I strongly prefer my Linux machine but use Windows mostly so that I can run Quicken. I feel doubly trapped: can't get off Quicken and thus can't get off Windows.
I'm only very slightly less reluctant to get an Apple machine (though the M* chips tempt me) and there will probably be incompatibilities between the versions of Quicken.
I think I should probably rip off the band-aid and migrate to:
+ spreadsheets (more control/future proof)
+ gnucash or similar (and risk that going unmaintained)
+ Wine
+ something I've not considered
IIUC the cloud solution provides cloud-based storage|copies of the quicken file and accessibility through a less-functional web-based tool and Simplifi isn't compatible.
So, thanks again for the suggestion but these solutions won't work for me.
Yeah, you're right. It is astonishing that Quicken's web app does not offer the same features and functionality as the desktop version. Having worked for many years as an SRE, I would have imagined that the opposite would be true - that Quicken would want to migrate its users to its online version, precisely so that customers could use the software from any client, be it Mac, Linux, WinBlows, or whatever.
The way I see it, there is very little creativity in big business. Fund an interesting new concept, or fund a formulaic sequel? Same thing every time.
So the makers of tired old PC operating systems look enviously upon the success of smartphones and think: We must do as they do. And thus S3 suspend gets replaced by "modern suspend" - just like a smartphone, not really suspended, just in a low power, always online, always ready to act mode. And local storage gets replaced by cloud, and local accounts get replaced by cloud accounts, and the cloud reaches in and modifies features and apps. Does this really make sense? Does it matter? Smartphones blazed the way and are successful. Must copy the formula, of your device just being an extension to the cloud, nothing more.
I sit here in front of my old school Linux machine, with terabytes of local storage and as little cloud dependency as possible. Heck it's part of the cloud itself, hosting an ancient cobwebsite right here from the basement. But I feel increasingly like an anachronism. Want to pass a photo dump to computer-neurotypicals? Not even a USB stick will do. Not even a USB-C stick that will plug right into their smartphone and allow the pix to be copied off easily from its UI. The whole concept of non-cloud stuff has become alien to most people.
Don't even get me started about getting photos from them! Anyway if that's how the world works now, why would anyone bother making a traditional operating system any more?
Big tech apologists: “while I used to enjoy playing Starcraft on Windows XP, it’s become clear that computing is no longer ‘personal’ and society needs some guardrails around it. I’m okay with sacrificing some liberties to protect the children.”
Bro, I played KCD2 on Ubuntu the day it launched last year. The games themselves are basically a solved problem and have been for a while now. Multiplayer games with anti cheat are the sticking point now, with only a little bit of progress there.
- work is still ongoing to get performance of direct x 12 games on NVIDIA closer to that of windows.
I really dislike the “expiration” date, and at one point they were very short (5 years) and poorly documented so it was a nasty surprise if you got an older model on sale.
I'm absolutely sure there are people who do. Chromebooks just have a practically nonexistant market share compared to Windows, and a lot of those users being kids being issued school laptops probably doesn't translate to a lot of visible complaining about Chromebook-specific problems.
What? I passionately hate Chromebooks, firstly because they were conceived as a power grab by Google to get people to do everything through online Google services instead of locally, and secondly in a more personal way when I actually had to use one, in a remote hostel with ropey internet.
I respect you. It's very hard to be passionate about something as bland as a Chromebook. It's like being passionate about tofu, or toothpaste, or baby shampoo.
I recently helped liberate about 70 EOL'ed Chromebooks. Now students in a college near me will get free laptops they can actually use for college work, running the latest and greatest Linux distros.
SusyQ USB-C Cable + USB-A to USB-C Cable + Coreboot?
Recently liberated a Chromebook that powerwashed my hours of manual provisioning again due to remote login control failure FWICS
Can't believe how much faster the same machine is with a modern Linux distro.
(ChromiumOS was originally Gnome and Chrome on a Gentoo derivative by Linux workstation users, but now has a "Turn on Linux" button greyed out for all the kids.)
The last line was really good. I may have differing opinions on some specifics but I loved this line:
"The personal computer movement was about empowerment not dependency"
Serious (related) question: is the the state of window 'snapping' equivalent to or better than Windows 11 in any *NIX, non-tiling WM desktop environments?
I had to restore my son's desktop PC last night from a USB stick. It didn't even have drivers for graphics over 800x600 or the wifi card. I was flabbergasted. It's windows 11, 2026, a 6-month old PC. I genuinely don't know how someone could sell something this awful with a straight face.
Windows was only ever better than DOS, by the same vendor. It's been awful compared to any competitor it's ever had. Really. I don't see a non-gaslighting argument for Windows anywhere.
Faster than OS/2, sure. Now try to download a file in the background while doing work in the foreground. You would be lucky if your Windows 3.1 communications application could complete it without multiple retries.
The two operating systems were trying to solve different problems, and had different system requirements because of that. Windows 3.1 was fine for running multiple interactive applications since neither application would be doing real work in the background. When Windows 95 entered the picture, that changed and its system requirements weren't all that different from OS/2.
And that is just one example. Windows 3.1 didn't provide much in the way of memory protection. (From my recollections, it could detect a memory access violation. At that point it would blue screen.) One of OS/2's most noteworthy features was memory protection. All of a sudden you could use your computer for an entire day without losing work from crashing. Yeah, OS/2 would happily terminate an application (rather than the OS) when there was a memory access violation. On the other hand, it made it much easier for developers to detect and address such bugs.
On that last point: I have fond memories of bringing OS/2 boot disks to my high school programming classes after the upgrade to Windows 95 (and, when they started refusing to let me boot OS/2, they let me use the NT server). There was a world of difference between programming under OS/2 or NT verses Windows 95. No one bothered to try programming under Windows 3.1!
Personal Computing was never in a better position.
Linux is a joy to use. Self hosting is easy as hell, with an abundance of tools and applications available. You can buy old refurbished machines that are still pretty amazing home servers for cheap.
Hell, even AI help with that. It's pretty good at making scripts and detailing step-by-step what you need to to get things running.
This all pre-dates AI. It's response to market forces and revenue growth.
With the rise of Linux and ChromeOS the operating system is becoming a free commodity. Applications with real revenue are becoming web bound, google here as shown the way. Google's productivity software is a major threat to Microsoft. Here there is monthly recurring revenue.
There is no significant profit left in producing the operating systems. It is a necessity, sure, but it's not offering a USP. It just is.
So, the corporate thinking goes, switch investment into monthly paying applications, like Office 365. Reduce the investment in the OS, while using the established user base as a way to push new customers toward the online services Microsoft provides. Sure, MS can extend it to ARM, but this is because they are chasing the Chrome OS users.
Of course, Windows, like MacOS can still host "native" applications like desktop versions of office, or adobe products. But the real revenue is in the online monthly subscriptions. Games will fall into this section too.
In the end to the user, Windows becomes just like Chrome OS, a launch pad into online services.
Valve seeks the direction of travel and creates it's own OS designed to launch games and drive users to its store... it's the same story, and play book.
For developers, and creatives, the only home left is Linux (and maybe *BSD). This is acknowledged, as both Windows and MacOS can now run Linux applications via WSL and Apple Containers. Why? = because this helps developers create applications that can be hosted in the cloud... something that has recurring revenue.
AI? - Well, it's a possible accelerator down this path, as the hardware needed to host the inference is huge.
So what's going to happen in the future? - Well, the cost of AI is a limiting factor. Add in the political moves between China, the US and the EU are going to limit the growth of US owned cloud. Digital sovereignty is key, and the US government can get access to anything held on US owned servers. China is moving forward with plans to remove US technology from its ecosystem.
The result, well, AI does offer great productivity gains with costs so high, and latency of online services, tasks specific small models will be pushed to the desktop. Laptop and hardware manufacturers will add accelerators for this. In the EU there will be new opportunities for competitors to Microsoft / Google to stand up solutions, open source will be key to this, so NextCloud, will be popular. But overall there will be a pull away from the very thin client toward a slightly thicker client. The EU will probably want to sponsor, or help create a version of an AI agent similar to DeepSeek in China, they've shown what's possible with a smaller budget.
This won't run on Windows, or MacOS, it's all going to end up running on Linux. A Linux disto from China, and one for the EU.
Even Linus Torvalds himself acknowledges they have done some outstanding pieces of software (and I wholeheartedly agree with every word he says on this clip - it's absolutely on point about this thread's topic).
Their hardware, however, was always top-notch. It's really a shame they divested from it almost completely. I'm getting a Logitech ergo keyboard because Microsoft no longer makes them.
Pretty sure it's just that Windows is horribly broken, privacy-invading, ad-ridden malware disguised as an operating system. I swear it seems like nobody at Microsoft not even once have asked the actual users for what they would like to see in the OS.
The video takes this one step further, and it has nothing to do with being 'out of touch' or something. The speaker is arguing there is a macro trend of pushing us towards agentic interactions instead of the UI components we're used to. Then it can track, tune and control everything we do, thanks to all the telemetry back and forth.
I wish people would engage with the content a bit. It's a huge claim (and scary).
> The speaker is arguing there is a macro trend of pushing us towards agentic interactions instead of the UI components we're used to.
This trend is not even limited to Windows.
We saw it begin years ago with Google etc gradually reducing the quality of search results. Then ChatGPT etc arrive shortly thereafter, and people are led to conclude "it works so much better than traditional search." Hard to believe these two events are unrelated.
Microsoft has a handful big clients - Dell, Lenovo, HP being the top three. They are the ones that make Windows be the default operating system on everyone's computers and they need to be happy, not the person who buys the computer. When the computer becomes unusable, they'll just get another from the same brands and everyone, except the user, are happy.
Corporations don't run Windows. They run Outlook, Excel, and Teams. Windows and generic PCs (or thin clients and VDIs) is just the cheapest way to achieve that goal.
> They are the ones that make Windows be the default operating system on everyone's computers
I've got to disagree. Macs are a fantastic option as long as the software needed to do actual work is available. That's the real bottleneck and it's not something Dell, Lenovo, or HP have any power over.
They still ship a lot more computers than Apple. For most of the world, Apple is a niche product. I use it, and I love them, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking corporations will start buying Mac Minis to replace their desktops and thin clients anytime soon.
That… does not follow. Corporations simply aren't going to start buying Macs for all of their millions of rank-and-file corporate drones. Even if they wanted, and they don't, they're tied to the Windows ecosystem in all sorts of ways, even though the software lives on someone else's computer these days.
Microsoft is declaring all users are now corporate drones. All your activity will be tied to your Microsoft account. All your files, images, and regular screenshots of your PC will be sucked into OneDrive. If your mouse has not moved in five minutes a manager will be notified.
Nah. I think the problem is that windows and macOS did everything users wanted them to do about 10-15 years ago. Everything since then has been lipstick on a pig.
If windows were a building, they need to stop tacking on more rooms like it’s a gaudy McMansion. If they really wanna keep working on it, work to make what’s already there more beautiful. Optimise. Reduce the install size. Clean up some of the decades of tech debt. Unify the different generations of UI toolkits. Write documentation. Port security critical parts to rust, where appropriate. Refine, don’t reinvent.
> did everything users wanted them to do about 10-15 years ago.
Certainly not; not by a long shot. Besides, most users don't even understand the potential of software. But why bother improving it if you still make money shipping crap?
and it made the pig actually uglier!
Users want a one time payment of $150, for a 50 million LoC software product, and then get 10 years of support.
Everyone here slinging mud, while getting paid out of the SaaS pot. Would windows be a better product if it was user focused but cost $40/mo? From Microsoft's POV it would probably kill numbers.
Actual users are less important to Microsoft than execs who actually purchase the licenses.
Used to be that people who bought the OS were the customer. Now just like everything else these days, they're the product. And the OS still isn't even free.
Plus it's hard to buy a computer without paying the MS tax, unless you build one yourself.
That's an issue I would like to see legislated! In fact, in my country there is a law that prohibits bundled purchases: it's just that the authorities are not tech savvy enough to see it when it pertains to computers and Windows.
While we're at it, lets stop bundling UEFI.
I'm being slightly absurd here since you need some sort of firmware to simply start up the computer and install an operating system, but here is my point: to most people, the operating system is part of the computer. The computer is simply an expensive brick without it. On top of that, a lot of the negativity towards bundling Windows originates from Microsoft's past monopolistic practices[1]. We certainly don't hear many people criticizing the bundling of macOS or iOS on Apple products or Android/Chrome OS on Android devices or Chromebooks. (There may be people who want to load alternative operating systems on these devices, but that is different from criticizing the bundling of the OS.)
[1] Is Microsoft forcing hardware vendors to install Windows even a thing these days?
It makes sense, if manufacturer provides support for Linux on the same laptop SKU. But that's very rarely the case. So selling laptop without OS seems like selling half-working product. When you're buying a car, it comes with a lot of software. ECU software, multimedia software (sometimes it's Windows CE) and so on.
I saw laptops selling with FreeDOS but realistically speaking I think that majority of these laptops end up with pirated Windows, so all it provides is increasing level of piracy.
Ideally laptop should provide a choice between Linux and Windows on the first boot. And easy way to buy Windows license if user chooses it.
1. There are plenty of computers sold with Linux installed.
2. You absolutely should build the computer yourself. You get a much better computer with best of class parts. And you learn something.
There are a few, but it seems that the best option is usually offered with Windows.
The last 3 machines I bought (for myself and for family members) came with Windows and I immediately installed Linux on them.
> 1. There are plenty of computers sold with Linux installed.
Compared to what?
What I learned is that I am no good at building computers.
And to add to this, proprietary OSs are about to get worse and can blame the politicians for it.
With these new age laws, these systems can legally ask for personal information, and I am sure as time goes, information required will expand.
As for Linux, seems systemd is all in on this, as for the BSDs, I doubt they will enforce these new laws.
You can lie when it requests for personal information.
I always identify myself as "Conan, The Barbarian" when creating account.
why I should be the one bothering with that though? and what happens when it starts requiring internet connection and biometric age verification?
In a couple years you won't have to bother with that. The device will connect to the ID chip embedded in your body when you're born. And this will be a one-time hard-wired coupling for that device when it is first turned on.
Are you claiming Linux is becoming always online?
That's one hell of a claim.
if it is governmently mandated that it is, it might become, at least the user facing distros.
of cource you can, but in the future ? Maybe you will be required to upload an ID.
I often wonder whether anyone at Microsoft actually uses Windows as their daily OS, and if they do, how have they not noticed what a sack of shit it is? And then I think, well if they were using linux or macOS as their daily OS, they'd definitely notice what a sack of shit Windows is. The only possible answer at the end of this is that they know what a sack of shit it is but don't care because nobody at Microsoft has any taste, conscience or values.
Windows was fiercely hated for a long time for being extremely buggy, low quality, high price, weak security (a later concern), and Microsoft’s general anti-consumer and anti-competitive practices.
Things improved slightly for a while and maybe the generation of Mac/linux using tech workers never suffered through the worst of it, but Microsoft seems to be back on track with their old ways.
Microsoft cleaned up when they got hit with antitrust and then started feeling a bit of competition when operating under consent decree. That's all "behind" them now and the Google settlement put antitrust to bed.
With Windows 10, I thought MS had turned a corner. But then came Windows 11, and turning two corners means doing a 180.
A 180 would imply a different direction than the original. I’d say they did a fakie 360 faceplant.
Yah, a 180 would actually be a good thing, but I guess it depends on your reference point. Like people, the analogy breaks when tortured. I like yours better overall :)
I strongly prefer my Linux machine but use Windows mostly so that I can run Quicken. I feel doubly trapped: can't get off Quicken and thus can't get off Windows.
I'm only very slightly less reluctant to get an Apple machine (though the M* chips tempt me) and there will probably be incompatibilities between the versions of Quicken.
I think I should probably rip off the band-aid and migrate to:
+ spreadsheets (more control/future proof) + gnucash or similar (and risk that going unmaintained) + Wine + something I've not considered
Do you need to run Quicken locally on your PC? Can you just use the cloud version of Quicken?
I was unaware that there is a cloud version and will investigate, thanks!
IIUC the cloud solution provides cloud-based storage|copies of the quicken file and accessibility through a less-functional web-based tool and Simplifi isn't compatible.
So, thanks again for the suggestion but these solutions won't work for me.
Yeah, you're right. It is astonishing that Quicken's web app does not offer the same features and functionality as the desktop version. Having worked for many years as an SRE, I would have imagined that the opposite would be true - that Quicken would want to migrate its users to its online version, precisely so that customers could use the software from any client, be it Mac, Linux, WinBlows, or whatever.
The way I see it, there is very little creativity in big business. Fund an interesting new concept, or fund a formulaic sequel? Same thing every time.
So the makers of tired old PC operating systems look enviously upon the success of smartphones and think: We must do as they do. And thus S3 suspend gets replaced by "modern suspend" - just like a smartphone, not really suspended, just in a low power, always online, always ready to act mode. And local storage gets replaced by cloud, and local accounts get replaced by cloud accounts, and the cloud reaches in and modifies features and apps. Does this really make sense? Does it matter? Smartphones blazed the way and are successful. Must copy the formula, of your device just being an extension to the cloud, nothing more.
I sit here in front of my old school Linux machine, with terabytes of local storage and as little cloud dependency as possible. Heck it's part of the cloud itself, hosting an ancient cobwebsite right here from the basement. But I feel increasingly like an anachronism. Want to pass a photo dump to computer-neurotypicals? Not even a USB stick will do. Not even a USB-C stick that will plug right into their smartphone and allow the pix to be copied off easily from its UI. The whole concept of non-cloud stuff has become alien to most people.
Don't even get me started about getting photos from them! Anyway if that's how the world works now, why would anyone bother making a traditional operating system any more?
Big tech apologists: “while I used to enjoy playing Starcraft on Windows XP, it’s become clear that computing is no longer ‘personal’ and society needs some guardrails around it. I’m okay with sacrificing some liberties to protect the children.”
Personal responsibility is dead in Silicon Valley.
Honestly those people can buy an Apple device. Got my mother one- just email and a web browser.
(But I have to give MS credit: you can still disable BitLocker and their ridiculous smart screen. I am using my PC the same way I've always used it).
When is gaming on the latest hardware going to be mature enough to move off this garbage operating system?
Can I play Kingdom Come II on Mint now? If not, are we moving there?
KCD2 works fine on Linux.
Ooof, you're way behind - see sibling comments. Come join us in the promised land, brother!
Bro, I played KCD2 on Ubuntu the day it launched last year. The games themselves are basically a solved problem and have been for a while now. Multiplayer games with anti cheat are the sticking point now, with only a little bit of progress there.
- work is still ongoing to get performance of direct x 12 games on NVIDIA closer to that of windows.
Thanks to valve its possible to play many games on linux
I use a SteamOS distribution for all my gaming, Bazzite. KCD2 works perfectly. The only game I haven't tried to get running yet is Star Citizen.
TL;DW: the exploding hate is due to Windows transitioning into a fully cloud-first OS.
Nobody passionately hates Chromebooks.
I really dislike the “expiration” date, and at one point they were very short (5 years) and poorly documented so it was a nasty surprise if you got an older model on sale.
I'm absolutely sure there are people who do. Chromebooks just have a practically nonexistant market share compared to Windows, and a lot of those users being kids being issued school laptops probably doesn't translate to a lot of visible complaining about Chromebook-specific problems.
I don’t think I have ever spent over $100 on a Chromebook. I can’t imagine putting serious money in one; it’s a toy/disposable computer.
What? I passionately hate Chromebooks, firstly because they were conceived as a power grab by Google to get people to do everything through online Google services instead of locally, and secondly in a more personal way when I actually had to use one, in a remote hostel with ropey internet.
I do
I respect you. It's very hard to be passionate about something as bland as a Chromebook. It's like being passionate about tofu, or toothpaste, or baby shampoo.
Me too
I recently helped liberate about 70 EOL'ed Chromebooks. Now students in a college near me will get free laptops they can actually use for college work, running the latest and greatest Linux distros.
Oh I thought it was a very dodgy process. Can you give some pointers? I will also ask an LLM?
Oh well that's a different matter. Nobody hates acceptable cheap hardware.
SusyQ USB-C Cable + USB-A to USB-C Cable + Coreboot?
Recently liberated a Chromebook that powerwashed my hours of manual provisioning again due to remote login control failure FWICS
Can't believe how much faster the same machine is with a modern Linux distro.
(ChromiumOS was originally Gnome and Chrome on a Gentoo derivative by Linux workstation users, but now has a "Turn on Linux" button greyed out for all the kids.)
Mrchromebox > Supported Devices: https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/docs/supported-devices.html
It's possible to install a list of apps with a script on Win, Mac, and Linux computers.
Try to `adb install com.google.android.calculator`.
Which should be the security priority? App download counts or automated provisioning?
The last line was really good. I may have differing opinions on some specifics but I loved this line: "The personal computer movement was about empowerment not dependency"
Serious (related) question: is the the state of window 'snapping' equivalent to or better than Windows 11 in any *NIX, non-tiling WM desktop environments?
I had to restore my son's desktop PC last night from a USB stick. It didn't even have drivers for graphics over 800x600 or the wifi card. I was flabbergasted. It's windows 11, 2026, a 6-month old PC. I genuinely don't know how someone could sell something this awful with a straight face.
Windows was only ever better than DOS, by the same vendor. It's been awful compared to any competitor it's ever had. Really. I don't see a non-gaslighting argument for Windows anywhere.
> It's been awful compared to any competitor it's ever had.
TBH, Windows 3.1 was reasonably nice compared to macOS 7, and much faster than OS/2 or Solaris 2.1 on the same hardware.
Faster than OS/2, sure. Now try to download a file in the background while doing work in the foreground. You would be lucky if your Windows 3.1 communications application could complete it without multiple retries.
The two operating systems were trying to solve different problems, and had different system requirements because of that. Windows 3.1 was fine for running multiple interactive applications since neither application would be doing real work in the background. When Windows 95 entered the picture, that changed and its system requirements weren't all that different from OS/2.
And that is just one example. Windows 3.1 didn't provide much in the way of memory protection. (From my recollections, it could detect a memory access violation. At that point it would blue screen.) One of OS/2's most noteworthy features was memory protection. All of a sudden you could use your computer for an entire day without losing work from crashing. Yeah, OS/2 would happily terminate an application (rather than the OS) when there was a memory access violation. On the other hand, it made it much easier for developers to detect and address such bugs.
On that last point: I have fond memories of bringing OS/2 boot disks to my high school programming classes after the upgrade to Windows 95 (and, when they started refusing to let me boot OS/2, they let me use the NT server). There was a world of difference between programming under OS/2 or NT verses Windows 95. No one bothered to try programming under Windows 3.1!
Didn't MS also do OS/2 early on? Didn't they bill IBM by line of code?
I can't say much about Solaris, I used it - much later - on sparc and amd64.
I can say that I was writing 16 bit windows apps in '95, including drivers and VxDs, and Win 3.1 was a piece of garbage inside and out.
Personal Computing was never in a better position.
Linux is a joy to use. Self hosting is easy as hell, with an abundance of tools and applications available. You can buy old refurbished machines that are still pretty amazing home servers for cheap.
Hell, even AI help with that. It's pretty good at making scripts and detailing step-by-step what you need to to get things running.
It is for us, the average user doesn't understand that.
Which version because I have been using it and it "functions" but it's not a joy.
I really love Fedora and GNOME. It looks nice, it's reliable, and stays out of the way. That's all I ask from an OS.
I have been on Mint for 4 years and I adore it. But I am a filthy casual, I like my OS to be pleasantly boring. Arch is not for me.
It's a genuine pleasure to use.
...for people who insist on using only Windows on their personal computer.
This all pre-dates AI. It's response to market forces and revenue growth.
With the rise of Linux and ChromeOS the operating system is becoming a free commodity. Applications with real revenue are becoming web bound, google here as shown the way. Google's productivity software is a major threat to Microsoft. Here there is monthly recurring revenue.
There is no significant profit left in producing the operating systems. It is a necessity, sure, but it's not offering a USP. It just is.
So, the corporate thinking goes, switch investment into monthly paying applications, like Office 365. Reduce the investment in the OS, while using the established user base as a way to push new customers toward the online services Microsoft provides. Sure, MS can extend it to ARM, but this is because they are chasing the Chrome OS users.
Of course, Windows, like MacOS can still host "native" applications like desktop versions of office, or adobe products. But the real revenue is in the online monthly subscriptions. Games will fall into this section too.
In the end to the user, Windows becomes just like Chrome OS, a launch pad into online services.
Valve seeks the direction of travel and creates it's own OS designed to launch games and drive users to its store... it's the same story, and play book.
For developers, and creatives, the only home left is Linux (and maybe *BSD). This is acknowledged, as both Windows and MacOS can now run Linux applications via WSL and Apple Containers. Why? = because this helps developers create applications that can be hosted in the cloud... something that has recurring revenue.
AI? - Well, it's a possible accelerator down this path, as the hardware needed to host the inference is huge.
So what's going to happen in the future? - Well, the cost of AI is a limiting factor. Add in the political moves between China, the US and the EU are going to limit the growth of US owned cloud. Digital sovereignty is key, and the US government can get access to anything held on US owned servers. China is moving forward with plans to remove US technology from its ecosystem.
The result, well, AI does offer great productivity gains with costs so high, and latency of online services, tasks specific small models will be pushed to the desktop. Laptop and hardware manufacturers will add accelerators for this. In the EU there will be new opportunities for competitors to Microsoft / Google to stand up solutions, open source will be key to this, so NextCloud, will be popular. But overall there will be a pull away from the very thin client toward a slightly thicker client. The EU will probably want to sponsor, or help create a version of an AI agent similar to DeepSeek in China, they've shown what's possible with a smaller budget.
This won't run on Windows, or MacOS, it's all going to end up running on Linux. A Linux disto from China, and one for the EU.
The company never made good software
Even Linus Torvalds himself acknowledges they have done some outstanding pieces of software (and I wholeheartedly agree with every word he says on this clip - it's absolutely on point about this thread's topic).
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BS-_ur-tYPw
Their hardware, however, was always top-notch. It's really a shame they divested from it almost completely. I'm getting a Logitech ergo keyboard because Microsoft no longer makes them.