This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Hah. Good luck trying to make me dispose of the computer I built almost a decade ago and that I just upgraded. Neither my laptops nor my phones have outlived this baby.
I switched to Linux on my laptops years ago. Recently, I retired and started playing video games like Skyrim. I play on a Nintendo Switch. I considered playing Skyrim on a laptop so I could use/build mods. I bought a laptop with Windows 11 and spent forty minutes removing the bloat, ads, spyware, ai nonsense, and other dross, fixing it so it did not 'update' to restore everything I deleted, and installing my preferred alternatives (browser, search, email etc). It reminded me why I hate Windows almost as much as Mac OS (which is even more controlling). Microsoft have hundreds of engineers 'enshitifying' everything. It is more than a full-time job trying to stop them and block their 'improvements'. I am retired. I have better things to do.
I did not enjoy playing games with a laptop (hurts my arthritis, I prefer using a console and an easy chair) and resented having to reverse engineer everything I installed to keep it running but without sacrificing my privacy so the laptop now just sits in a drawer. It amazes me that anyone still tolerates Microsoft products, or any of the monopolists stuff. Why is anyone still using google search or chrome browser, why bing or any of it? Why is anyone still seeing adverts? Why is everyone still being fed by algorithms? You must chose this - but why? I always sought out better and if it did not exist, I built it, and if I could not build it, I did without. There is a lot of dumbing-down around technology. Back in C20th, we used to build our own hardware, write our own software. We were skilled hobbyists (later I got an M.Sc. to reinforce my hobby skills with theory and even ran a business for a while as an engineer). Around 2000 +/- five years, the monopolists offered 'help' in the form of WYSIWYG editors to write code for us or 'click buttons to register your account' platforms to host content for us instead of us running our own websites (blogger, wordpress, facebook, twitter etc). They dumbed us all down, farmed us like animals for data and used clickbait to get ad revenue and undermined our politics, culture, even changed our sense of being human. Now old folk can build resources but younger people can only consume. We have to re-skill and resist the seduction of the easy and free-to-use. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Never trust a tech bro, whether USA or any nationality.
Personally, I want to 'jail break' my Switch and make mods for my console version of Skyrim. I can't do that now as it is illegal but when they bring out the Switch 2 and the old console is 'obsolete' and they stop trying to get money for Skyrim, I reckon we tinkerers will get a chance to re-purpose the old console to play the old games in our own way. I reckon some exciting engineering is happening amongst the recyclers and re-purposers rather than amongst the corporates. I only buy second-hand for ethical reasons and to save money. I always install my own software based on AOSP or use a more ethical distro or alternative to the commercial options. I always debloat or degoogle or remove unwanted stuff. I wish that kind of personalisation were more common. There is a zero sum relationship with tech: either the technology controls you, or you control it. I urge you to control your own tech. Don't be enslaved by it. I feel I am in a minority in wanting sovereignty over my damn phone. It makes me sad.
W10 wouldn't get past the pin screen (type pin, then black screen forever, nothing else), so I used a live boot disk of fedora to rescue my files (turns out you can just bypass windows pins and mount the drive), then installed fedora on my old toshiba satellite and never looked back. Few years in I upgraded with linux in mind and now am cruising with a Framework 16. No regrets.
Join us! Cast off your shackles! Microsoft has no power over you beyond what you willingly give them!
Can't game 100% on Linux not all games work well enough and driver issues.
If not we wouldn't be on Windows.
Trading in a PC.... in 2025? To who? Where? What time period, even? They must be thinking it's still 1985, and you can trade in your IBM Compatible to your nearest IBM Distributor.
Maybe to the "third world" ( i dont like this name ) countries which still use linux because of high financial costs of windows... I can't wait react os 1.0
Users to microsoft: "You're creating a huge pile of garbage out of perfectly fine devices because of unneeded hardware requirement"
microsoft: "It's ok, just buy a new one"
Rarely have a message gone through so bad.
Funny because people still use Windows 7 in large quantities across the world.
Linux users tell Microsoft to just get over it, dump your parasitic software and start over, because how hard can it be?
As hard as plugging in a USB with OS and follow instructions.
Minus all the caveats like not being reliable on anything with an NVidia GPU or just hating your specific setup for no reason (I am salty, I'm going to keep trying anyway)
I've recently convinced my daughter to try Mint on her system. She has GF 1650 and it worked out of the box with propietary Nvidia driver (nothing needed to install additionally, with the option to switch to open source driver). Really, it's not worse than on Windows.
Can MS be sued by EU for this? There was the thing with USB-C, because E-waste, and now the most used Desktop-OS says "just throw your PC away" for a not really needed (and artifically defined) requirement.
I don't think there would be any legal standing for it. The computers being dropped won't be losing their functionality since users could just switch to something different or keep using Windows 10 without security patches. The
The?
You heard 'em, "The."
If you have a new WINDOWS ELEVEN11! PC you can read the rest of the text.
If you are living on the coast and the water is rising due to climate change, just sell your house and move.
Sell their houses to who, Ben? Fucking Aquaman?!
Hbomberguy is so based
I want you to know a few things. First, you saved me a Google, so I appreciate that. Second, I am working overtime to support a department that isn't working at the moment, and so I have very little to do. (Long story) I was real excited to slap on my headphones and listen to an hour and a half long rant about fallout 3, only to discover that I left them at home. And so I am terribly disappointed.
And I now I use Linux. Will never go back to Windows after this nonsense.
This is the way. Linux gave my computer more freedom and lifespan. Never go back again.
Linux speed increase over Windows it's like jumping 10 years into the future
I made the jump recently, too, after having to use W11 for my studies... Figured that the one multiplayer game I play that actually needs Windows to work (and that's purely because the dev's won't enable anticheat on Linux) is not too much of a sacrifice when the alternative would be giving out the possibility to tune the OS to my liking.
Bye bye Windows, you were "great" during XP and W7 times!
Well, if I'm honest I tried to install Win11 before Linux but it was such a pain in the arse I gave up. The installer couldn't pick up the SSD so I had to download drivers onto USB and install them half way through the wizard. THEN, it wouldn't pick up the WiFi card so I bypassed that to get the installer to finish, and to top it off, even after I'd installed all the drivers, it still didn't pick it up, not in the device manager, nowhere, as if it didn't exist. So I gave up. Linux installed first time and although it's not quite perfect yet it's functional enough for me to actually use the flipping thing! Haha
I've installed every Windows since 95 on various machines and never had so much trouble. Win11 is complete crap. And Microsoft are a bunch of dickheads for forcing it when there was literally nothing wrong with Win10.
I also had problems installing Win10 years ago, the problem was I had more than one drive plugged in... Took me half a day to figure that out.
The only problem with installing Linux (pop_OS this time) was I didn't flash my USB stick properly, so user error. Also, could be my old Kingston Datatraveler isn't well suited for the job
Don't even want to think how badly installing Win11 now would break my system...
This is kinda funny, just thinking someone believes you can "trade in" a PC at all. Even more so when they are trying to say those same Windows 10 machines will be so useless you need to trade them in in the first place, making the value of such a trade in what, next to nothing?
