this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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The only reason Windows is still relevant is a massive volume of legacy x86 applications.
If that laptop won't support x86 emulation, it'd be actually worse that Linux ARM laptop.
Windows is relevant because it's a better product for the average user. The same goes for OSX. ARM isn't going to change any of that. Especially with NVIDIA GPUs being broken and a pain in the ass.
Windows is not a 'better' product, that would be ChromeOS. Zero configuration means nothing can get broken.
The average user who started with MS Office 95 is now 50 years old. The younger average user at least knows there are alternatives to Windows.
PC gaming is a whole other can of worms. I keep hearing that Valve did some black mahic and now most of Steam games work on Linux with no issues.
I've been gaming on linux for about two years now through steam proton and it's really good. Some games don't run because of anti cheat, some games run even better than on windows.
Gaming on Linux has come a long way and I always prefer to run it on Linux rather than a dedicated Windows boot, if possible.
But if you rely on VRR, DLSS and have a decent HDR display, Linux unfortunately still isn't quite there yet. VRR/HDR is mostly unsupported systemwide currently. DLSS sometimes works, sometimes requires a lot of debugging and ends up actually hurting the performance.
If your hardware setup allows you to run your games at a decent framerate without DLSS/VRR, this likely won't be an issue for you.
Google Docs is the only meaningful competitor to Office. No one I know wants to try Linux desktop and I think it’s hard to convince anyone to give up the convenience of Windows. Proton works but in my experience requires too much experimentation for the average user.
That’s one thing macOS does well: legacy support— at least for x64.
for now…
I have been running Windows 10+11 on arm for years now, the next version of Windows Server 2025 already has an arm preview release. Windows ARM has for a long time had x86 emulation, and has supported x64 emulation since about the start of COVID.
Is it actually emulation? Macs don't do that.
They convert the x86 code into native ARM code, then execute it. Recompiling the software takes a moment, and some CPU instructions don't have a good equivalent, but for the most part it works very well.
MacOS does use the term translations for its Rosetta Layer while Windows Arm uses the term emulation. I do believe the technical difference is that MacOS converts x64 code to arm64 on the fly, while part of the reason for emulation on Windows is to support x86 and other architectures. Someone more knowledgeable than me may be able to better compare the two offerings.
They did a good job when moving from os9-osx. Adobe took a looong time to move to osx
I thought MacOS barely does any legacy support because apple isn't afraid to cut support for old stuff unlike Microsoft.