Microsoft, doing it’s part to make the world a better place.
This is a huge business opportunity for someone with the know-how. They should offer a consulting service that does the following:
- Catalogs the software your company is using.
- Identifies which ones have native Linux versions, which ones work well under WINE, and which ones will need to be replaced with either a different native application or an online equivalent.
- Installs and configures Linux with a Windows-like UI on your old systems, and gets them set up with the replacement software.
Offer a support contract that severely undercuts anything Microsoft is gouging selling. Offer basic training, too.
Anyone who does that can make bank.
That’s actually a decent idea if people are using boilerplate windows software. Unfortunately institutional software is unlikely to cross over, and even if similar software can be found to replace private users’ needs, there is going to be resistance to change. This doesn’t even touch anyone using specialized software. The resistance will be commensurate with the differences in workflow and usage between the windows and Linux software.
I mean, the whole point is people don’t want to change. The only way you’d win people over easily is directly cloning their windows setup.
And there’s a cost to that change. Reduced performance. Could easily be measured in lost $ or increased costs.
Yeah, and it’s likely way less costly to the company to just buy a new win 11 computer than it is to pay an employee to train on new software. Not to mention the cost of paying someone to find someone to do a Linux conversion, paying the person doing the conversion, and the loss of productivity as the person learns. Not to mention the cost of changing IT infrastructure, hiring new IT people to manage those machines, etc.
There’s a reason companies don’t just switch at the drop of the hat. There’s too much commitment and institutional knowledge already and moving is not a simple change.
Anyone who does that can make bank.
See, the key flaw in your plan is expecting companies to shell out to upgrade their systems. Putting aside organizations who’s infrastructure can’t realistically transfer to a new system without scrapping it entirely, pretty much every business will run their systems until they have literally no other choice (ie it is functionally unusable/affecting sales) instead of “losing money” upgrading. MS stopping updates won’t push them over that line, at least not for a while.
… pretty much every business will run their systems until
Cousin Vinny gives them a little taste of ransomware and reminds them your upgrade plan is actually a great deal
Would also need to get a burner phone number w/ answering machine to take calls from 240 million grandmas, cheapskate businesses and cash-strapped public schools for any & all tech support questions until the end of time, because if there was an issue with system stability in any way whatsoever, or if the router went down or the printer stopped working, they’d assume it was the fault of ‘the guy who changed everything’.
Linux is great & everything, but this sounds like a recipe for utter disaster, not a way to make an easy buck.
I can’t agree with this more. People like to sell Linux as a magic bullet, but it does not and will not everything everyone needs without maintenance and people really like to hand wave or downplay that need.
Sure, you could find a solution for what they’re using now. What happens when they need something else and they’re so tech illiterate that they don’t even know what you did to their machine? They wouldn’t even know how to install new software, and if they did, they wouldn’t know they need to click the Linux version, etc. It’s not always about feasibility and available options, it’s often about the fact that people just won’t fucking know what to do. Even if you assume there are enough options available, they won’t know how to do so.
And every step Microsoft takes to shoot themselves in the foot, and every step Linux takes to make this easier, everyone comes screaming about how much this could change things.
But until Linux has a HUGE market share - like in the 30-70 percent range - developers are not going to take it seriously and alleviate this process. Even with how well MacOS does, this is not even a solved problem entirely there - there are still hang ups and still software that doesn’t get released for mac. Linux would have to pass where Apple is today for this to become remotely accessible to an every day person.
And even THEN there’s the question of different Linux distros.
I lived in this town and there was this"computer and pawn" place. They did this to people’s computers. I constantly had people come into the computer place I worked at very confused. Not knowing why they needed a password to install things, where is Microsoft office, how do I print, etc. Most of these people didn’t have the money to put windows back on, but, those that did, did real quick. All this did was scare people away. If we started replacing Linux on people’s computers it needs to come with a intro tech support plan and a short intro class explaining the basics.
At this point the people that benefit the most easily are those who only need email, Web browsing and or are old. People who work off their machine are going to use Windows and that former demographic usually just use their phones or a tablet now. At least in the US
Yeah hard pass.
Will I take advantage of the heavily discounted used market this causes? Maybe. (Assuming they manage to actually convince people they should move to 11, which also sucks.) But there’s good reason not to be IT for people who can’t manage it themselves. It’s a huge headache.
@FonsNihilo @kescusay this is painfully true. I remember some well meaning techies wired up an entire lab for the school district once, included free repurposed PCs running Linux. Didn’t take long before the district paid HP to take all of it away and give us the crappiest speced machines tax money could buy. But hey, that deal gave the football team money to AstroTurf the field (with a donation from HP)🤦♂️
Support is a major cost/pain point, that Linux pushers just don’t get.
They’ve never worked in enterprise (or hell, even in SMB IT). Moving from windows doesn’t make sense. It’s a lot if cost, up front, to take on lots of risk.
I’m not sure Linux will ever significantly compete with Windows for the desktop. At a minumim it would require a single shell to become dominant, in addition to all the compatibility issues you mention.
Then there’s management: Windows has SCOM, with a well-established app packaging/distribution model, settings config, user management (AD/Exchange), etc, etc.
Linux is fantastic as a base OS for other stuff. Like Proxmox/TrueNAS, or to use as a server with containerized services. There’s a million ways Linux is the answer, a much better one, than Windows - largely in the server/services hosting realm
You never used Linux then. There are well defined packages in the way Windows is trying to get with their store apps and chocolatey can mimic if you build the packages. You could also look up containers, flatpaks etc. Similar to how Windows has msis and store apps and exes.
Linux has Foreman plus puppet. Or chef or Ansible. You can also use those on Windows.
The idea that a company could not decide their shell standards or their support company or people for Linux is like saying they can’t handle the competition in fleet vehicles or cloud providers or pen companies.
Have you used a modern version of Linux or Windows? You can basically use most Linuxes like Android with a guide app store, and there’s almost no way to break it. Windows also will still let you be admin and let you break it. Neither is particularly easy to break anymore.
Peripherals certainly do not just work on Windows. More and more I fight with getting anything to work on a clean Windows OS install. First I have to go find a network driver and copy it via USB. Then hope Windows will find drivers from there, which often it doesn’t get good ones for say Nvidia. Printers often take me to the manufacturer website and hope. For things like mice or Wi-Fi adapters Linux just works, same hunt for less standard stuff.
Maybe I just deal with a wider array of hardware but to say it plug and play on windows and not Linux is just not true.
For someone who just uses Facebook…there is no learning Linux. I moved my mom from XP to XFCE and Firefox just copied right over. She has a lot less issues with Enterprise Linux than she did with XP and Facebook still just works like 8 years later.
Have you used a modern version of Linux or Windows? You can basically use most Linuxes like Android with a guide app store, and there’s almost no way to break it. Windows also will still let you be admin and let you break it. Neither is particularly easy to break anymore.
It’s still something that can happen. I’ve run into an issue trying to install Ubuntu onto a PC which worked fine on the live USB but installed the incorrect Nvidia driver and ended up failing to boot. Took me a whole day, even as a software engineer, to fix it and even then, that’s just to get it to display, I had to do a lot more digging to even get CUDA to run on it since I was still using an incorrect driver. I’m fine with that but I can’t imagine most people are.
Even if Windows doesn’t get the best driver for the job, more often than not it will still somewhat function for the hardware that most people use.
It’s a lot better than it used to be but there’s still issues here and there. For the average user, better the devil you know than the one you don’t.
Your post reminded me. I worked tech support for years at an ISP and we would not help people with Linux systems. Only Windows or Macs. Android on a cell but only help with connecting to Wi-Fi and very basic settings up email if they used the ISP email.
I think your info is out of date, at least from what I see. Schools are going to Chromebooks because that’s all the budget allows. I think it’s going to be scary when these kids enter the workforce and can’t use Windows office.
Companies won’t pay. Even SMB.
There’s way too much stuff that only runs on windows, their users are used to windows.
You’re telling them to spend a lot of money to transition, and take on a lot of risk.
It just ain’t gonna happen.
Look at the current VMware issue to see what companies will do.
