Microsoft wants to move Windows fully to the cloud
Microsoft wants to move Windows fully to the cloud
You might boot laptops straight into a cloud OS in the future
You might boot laptops straight into a cloud OS in the future
Join the Linux club. You'll never go back once you get the hang of it! Nothing in my house has Windows. Left it years ago and have had zero regrets.
Despite not being nearly as user-friendly as Windows, the problem with Linux, at least in my many attempts to use it as a daily driver, is that system failures are often catastrophic and involve expert-level skills to work through.
In constant, I haven't had a Windows system in the last 20 years force me to reinstall the OS.
But if Microsoft goes this route, I will absolutely have no issues with switching to Linux and working through any pain points.
Personally, I find KDE Plasma to be extremely easy to use. I prefer it to Windows, but that could also just be familiarity.
I've also not had a catastrophic failure in I don't know how many years. I have several machines running Linux and the only time I reinstall is when I get a new computer. 20 years ago we were still running XP or maybe Vista and I absolutely remember reinstalling XP several times. Windows even today has it's share of "expert-level" fixes too. I find the incantations to fix Windows problems even more mysterious, and often coming from sources I'm not sure I can trust.
In any case it's all anecdotal, but I wanted to offer a counterpoint in favor of Linux. :)
I do recommend giving it a go, as it's really improved a lot in the last several years.
personally the problem for linux to me is lack of support from companies
Honest question(s) from someone who's been using Linux as a daily diver for well over a decade:
What distro were you using as a daily driver that encountered "catastrophic" system failures? What sort of use case? Was this recent?
If you really want to tinker, you can certainly break your system if you don't really know what you're doing. I'm sure I encountered that in my early days of playing around with home servers and whatnot; but I can honestly say that I haven't had this experience at all with my "daily driver". I've been running Fedora for a couple years now on my laptop; and everything just works. I run updates (at my leisure) once every week or two. I can't remember the last time something just "broke". I certainly can't remember the last time (if ever?) I had to "reinstall the OS" due to a catastrophic failure.
That is the exact opposite from my experience. Winodws has always been unstable, slow, and requires rebooting and reinstalling often. Linux is none of those things.
Same. I actually love Linux and don't like to do software dev on anything else. The only reason windows is my main personal computer is for gaming and streaming services. And some of that is inertia, cause I'm aware that Linux gaming has improved a ton in recent years.
How do you deal with compatibility issues? I dual boot Fedora on my surface but I keep having to boot back in for various reasons.
Have you been able to set up a windows VM for the purpose of gaming, or do you just play proton compatible games?
I only play native and proton/wine-compatible games on Linux, but keep in mind that we're still talking about a lot of games.
Recently I've been mostly playing Street Fighter 6 (outside of TotK on the Switch, that is) and it works damn near flawlessly from what I can tell; single player, ranked matches, replays, etc, all work perfectly. I've also played a ton of Elden Ring, Apex Legends, and a bunch of other stuff too.
I used to think that running a VM with GPU pass-through would be cool, but frankly these days I just don't feel like I need it for any of the games I like to play. Your mileage may vary though depending on what games you're into.
I very regularly complain about the eGPU issue on Linux, since I want to swap so badly--every program I use (with the exception of Drawboard PDF, which operates on a universal standard) is cross platform, and I have successfully installed a wide variety of linux distros on my laptop and got everything working well (even pen input on Xournal!!).
However, I use an Nvidia eGPU to drive three additional monitors I use for work, and on Linux I am unable to hotplug my eGPU, instead requiring a login/logout (or at least me closing all my open programs, which defeats the purpose of hotplug). I've tried Wayland/Xorg, and distros varying from Fedora to Pop OS (so far, my best experience was on Kubuntu/Wayland, but the computer still regularly crashed when disconnecting). I wish I were a better programmer, since then I could figure the issue out myself!
As soon as the Linux kernel has better support for hotplugging, I will never need to boot Windows again!
Edit: I am not unfamiliar with Linux, and I've been running Linux servers for well over a decade--I just have little experience in the realm of graphics drivers
Jerboa errored on sending this, hopefully not a double post:
I'm not sure when the last time you tested it out is, but I'm seeing a few things online about kernel 5.14+ bringing in a lot more support for eGPU, albeit AMD and not Nvidia. I could definitely see how that'd be a deal breaker, but it looks like if it's not working with the newest kernels yet, maybe someone's working on it as we speak? Fingers crossed!
And I want to move Windows fully to my past
shit if I could go back in time and remove it from my past that'd be even better
Making everything a service for the sake of revenue sucks ass.
I’m not interested in a future where my computer is literally useless without an internet connection.
The thing that I don't get is that moving everything to the cloud kind of destroys their moat, doesn't it? The only reason Windows has maintained it's place in the OS ecosystem is because people claim everything runs on Windows. I think it really speaks to how far software on Windows has fallen (e.g. scammy nonfree programs being required for basic tasks like managing hard drive partitions) that Microsoft thinks that's worth blowing up. Of course, I understand the justification of Microsoft is a huge cloud player, but why wouldn't they try to maintain OS dominance?
MS Windows as a subscription service. What a nightmare.
Are they going to add ads to the task manager or something next? At this poinr I feel more and more compelled to keep using Fedora.
Microsoft is doing anything to push me towards Linux…
I understand it from a business perspective. They make the user more dependent and can earn more money. But the day you force me to store MY business data on some cloud servers which do not belong to me you lose me as a customer.
Maybe I should load my old Nixos config and have a look how my Laptop is doing now 😉
Agreed. Forcing me to rely on my inconsistent home wifi when trying to work on documents is just going to push me away as a long term advanced Office user.
Guess this is the year for change - time to start looking into alternative options.
What could go wrong
if the rumors are true & microsoft is planning to make windows 365 the de-facto way to purchase windows in the future like with office, it'll be the dumbest move they've ever made & proof some new leadership is probably needed at some level. individual apps are one thing but no one wants something as critical & expansive as the os to just be a glorified rdp session, nor do they want it to be dependant on a subscription. i've told some of my non techie friends about this (all lifelong windows users) & they all said it'd be the one thing that makes them go to something else.
You will own nothing and be happy
Hopefully Microsoft will do that. Then maybe I'll finally stop putting off switching from Windows to Linux on my main PC.
Christ, how to push away a lifelong windows user...
Companies seem to love making moves that destroy themselves recently
Debian.
So like Chromebooks, or something weirder?
Do I want an OS that can offload to remote servers? I mean kinda actually, that'd be neat. Do I want another thing in my life to be a subscription I have no control on, absolutely not.
right, this would be cool if it's self hostable. i wouldn't hold my breath though, knowing microsoft.
Sounds like ChromeOS?
Hey, even ChromeOS itself runs off of the computer.
But why on consumer gear? Stadia failed due Google; how is this going to be better?
Hey, another company that wants customers to RUN away.
Is this a trendy thing to do in the business world now?
Ah, the Adobe f u I want more model.
Apple: “write that down! WRITE THAT DOWN!”
Microsoft can move fully to deez nuts.
Windows as a service. Yuck.
Great how basically the only argument for this from the consumer side is AI-stuff, which perfectly works already and even has foss versions which can run locally
You might.
I'll keep booting into Linux, and I would recommend anyone that Microsoft pisses off to try the same.
Yeah, I'm really hoping this is just going to be an additional option for those who want a lightweight ChromeOS style experience. Forcing everyone to a streaming OS is not going to go well.
If only Linux had an official Xbox and Game Pass app so that I could play app my Xbox games on it natively without having to stream it from a webpage :(
As someone who is working as an Azure and M365 admin for a living... yeah, nah, Microsoft. Nah.
I am glad I already made the jump to Linux at home, and frankly, I think Microsoft would be a fool if they pulled through with this.
I bet they'd revert the decision of making Windows cloud-only within a year.
On other hand, I kind of want Microsoft and Apple to force it through, charge $60/mo and lose all of their users within a few days and see Linux population exploded. Ah one can dream...
Why would Apple follow? They sell hardware, they want you to buy the physical device. If anything Apple has been pushing on-device compute more than anyone else these few years.