This feels like such a fuck you to working class. People can’t afford another layer of these costs right now.
… This is bait right? You want somebody to tell you there’s a simple and free solution, and then you’re going to say it’s a bad solution?
FINE! I’ll bite: Pirated copy of Windows Enterprise LTSC. It’s less useful, more resource hungry, privacy invasive and has worse support for older hardware than Linux though.
Working class people at large don’t know about these alternatives, I’m certain you know that. IT folk and nerds alike do, but anyone outside of these circles don’t necessarily see the choice they have
Those people that don’t know options exist are also people that don’t care about or know about support life for something like the OS - they just see it as what the computer comes with. Most of them probably wouldn’t have upgraded from 7 to 10 without it just doing it itself. A lot of them will just keep using 10 well past the end of support.
Also, I really enjoyed Railcar’s subversion of expectations with all that lead up to what we all assumed was a Linux recommendation to end up being pirated windows. That got a chuckle out of me. I feel like the haters didn’t get the joke.
Working class people at large don’t know about these alternatives,
You mean only the elite know about Linux? Preposterous!
*proceeds to clean monocle
Jokes aside, it might be a good time to teach and learn. Or pay, or have less security moving forward.
It was a staple of the “working class” to be resourceful, to know to repair stuff. It’s on Microsoft best interest that you change the computer, that you pay another OEM license, that they can drop support for older hardware… And this will happen again with windows 12.
Working class doesn’t have time to do this research and just needs a working machine
Objectively speaking Linux is not a Windows replacement, its a minix replacement and competes with FreeBSD. Not everyone wants Linux and tbh I wouldnt reccomend Linux to most people.
I’m very interested on a longer explanation of this take, considering how many people use Linux as a replacement for windows.
And if the argument is “not everything that runs on windows works on Linux”, remember that can be said with windows vs Mac, iOS vs android and even windows 10 vs windows 11.
Objective is a very strong word there. “[OS] Replacement” could mean any number of things.
