cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15988326

Windows 10 will reach end of support on October 14, 2025. The current version, 22H2, will be the final version of Windows 10, and all editions will remain in support with monthly security update releases through that date. Existing LTSC releases will continue to receive updates beyond that date based on their specific lifecycles.

Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-home-and-pro

293 points

You can recommend what you like. As soon as Windows 10 can’t play the latest games I’m off to Linux.

Eat my whole ass, Microsoft.

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108 points

Come on over, the water is fine. I switched to Pop_OS a few months back for the gaming rig and Proton+Steam works almost flawlessly. Older titles sometimes have hiccups, but so far ive only been blocked on one title.

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46 points

Yep it’s pretty easy and my computer runs so much faster than Windows on the same machine.

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23 points

Windows running on a VM under linux runs faster than windows on bare metal …

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27 points

I just switched from W10 to Pop_OS and have had lots of trouble. I’m trying to stick with it but from audio glitches to many games not running unless I find a random CLI arg that someone mentioned on Reddit, to my UI freezing, it’s not been an easy switch.

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26 points

Any chance you have an nvidia card? Nvidia for a long time has been in a worse spot on Linux than AMD, which interestingly is the inverse of Windows. A lot of AMD users complain of driver issues on Windows and swap to Nvidia as a result, and the exact opposite happens on Linux.

Nvidia is getting much better on Linux though, and Wayland+explicit sync is coming down the pipeline. With NVK in a couple years it’s quite possible that nvidia/amd Linux experience will be very similar.

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10 points

it’s not a drop in replacement and anyone looking for one will be disappointed by literally anything available.

You’re learning an entirely new operating system, don’t think of it as an upgrade, this is a time sink. You’ll be under the hood more than on the road for the foreseeable future, but what’s the alternative?

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2 points

Try bazzite? It’s been cool with my setup. Intel processor with GTX 1660 ti.

Mint has been cool too! on a laptop with a 1650 on it

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8 points

I’ve seen a lot of people recommending Pop_OS lately. Out of curiosity, what’s the benefit over something like Mint?

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7 points

I’ll try to offer an answer to both you and @natedog526.

Pop came heavily recommended for a while because it’s relatively light-weight for a modern desktop, had some fresh UI ideas with its COSMIC plugins for Gnome, and ships with some nice bonuses for gamers like built in Steam and Nvidia setup scripts.

Unfortunately, it’s become pretty stale lately. I still use it daily on my main desktop, but lately it’s becoming harder and harder to keep from hopping to something new. A few pain points include Pop shipping older version of some important software like the Kernel, Wine, and Mesa, persistsant audio bugs like the other user mentioned, and basically no support for Wayland at the moment.

A lot of these are because System76 has been heavily focused working on its COSMIC desktop, which should function a full standalone desktop environment instead of Gnome with duct tape. It’s looking forward to seeing it which has so far kept me from switching, but with no release date and other distros offering what Pop offers, it’s harder and harder to stay put.

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3 points

Curious about this too. I was gonna spend some time trying some different distros. Both mint and PopOs are on my list.

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5 points

If iRacing and my other sim racing gear worked with Linux I’d make the switch asap. I already have popOS on another hard drive and everything other than iRacing has worked well

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Looks like iRacing is working on proton experimental as of 3 days ago At least according to a user on protondb

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4 points

Yup, similar boat but with planes instead of cars. Most inputs Linux can support on a single usb device is 86 or so, my throttle alone has well over 150 buttons on it. Add in all the stuff for my sim cockpit (probably around 1000 buttons), my haptic feedback chair, and then VR… as much as I’d like to use Linux, I don’t think it’d be possible for the foreseeable future for me to switch.

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3 points

I switched to Pop!_OS about 3 months ago and have been loving it! First Linux distribution that just worked for me, and every app works better than any other Linux or Windows 11 on the same hardware.

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3 points

I did the same a few months back. No problems so far. Some older games require switching up the compatibility layer occasionally but no deal breakers so far.

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2 points

Running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed right now and it’s great!

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16 points

We need a successful replacement to DirectX for this to happen.

Look how desperate they are now for their web browser, imagine when people start abandoning Windows because there are other options that work just as well. I can’t wait.

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55 points

We need a successful replacement to DirectX for this to happen.

Vulkan?

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8 points

Definitely, I’m not saying that there aren’t any viable candidates out there now, but the title base for games that support Vulkan seems to be not even 1/10th of what DirectX 11 can support. It needs more acceptance I guess is what I mean.

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9 points
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Honestly even the as-is directX with Wine is already quite good. With Vulkan, game over :-)

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1 point

Wine doesn’t do DirectX. A wine environment set up for gaming uses DXVK or VKD3D to translate everything to Vulkan.

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8 points
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We already do?

DXVK and VKD3D have been translating DirectX 9-12 to Vulkan for a while now, allowing DirectX games and applications to run on hardware and/or operating systems that don’t support DirectX.

Intels ARC GPUs don’t even support DirectX on a hardware level, like it’s just straight up not there. Intels drivers instead just translate it to Vulkan, and their at times insane FPS boosts from driver updates was due to them improving that translation and getting closer to 1:1 performance.

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-1 points
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At times, yes. But at most times, no. Certain games can capitalize on ARC and I was just as enthusiastic as everyone else when it first started making the rounds. But theres a reason the cards haven’t caught on and most people seem to rely on them more for offloading things like streaming and AV1 encoding/decoding

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11 points
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I haven’t touched my Windows PC since the steam deck came out. If you only care about games you don’t need Windows.

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10 points

That was my choice too. I made the jump to Mint earlier this year and couldn’t be happier. It took a little effort to get updated GPU drivers, and my games sometimes need an extra CLI argument added, but those things have been pretty quickly and easily found on the Mint forums, Ubuntu forums, or ProtonDB comments.

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10 points

Linux can play most games nowadays. You can check if your games are compatible and to what extend they are not here https://www.protondb.com/

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8 points

It’s funny seeing this every couple of years. People get up in arms about something with Windows, some switch to Linux because they outgrew Windows and the time was right. By now I think you guys could be primary source of Linux users.

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9 points

Yeah, I’m guilty of this tbh. It’s just the massive unknown of leaving something you’ve been so close to for literally the majority of my life.

It’s scary!

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3 points

It’s little grievances that eventually pile up and one day you’ll just have had enough and switch.

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8 points

Switched to arch linux last november, didn’t had to launch my backup VM Win10 at all. I even managed to play at StarCitizen with better performance than under Win 10…

Just wow the progress of Linux, Wine & co since my last linux try (Ubuntu, around 2010).

I just need now to find a linux way for my music stack and all the VST (my steinberg usb card is recognized and play properly oO) and Windows will be history at home…

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1 point

Yeah ive also had s Star Citizen running in Arch. My setup didnt support game updates though so every update needed a complete redownload of the entire game which got old real fast.

Also had Microsoft Flight Simulator running very well too which is peak irony. At first there was issues with satellite terrain and imagary as the networking was broken but a Proton update actually fixed that.

Im incredibly impressed on the type of heavy duty window games ive got working in linux, some working very well others with slight occasional issues.

Linux gaming isnt perfect but windows has never been either. Ive had plenty of experience over the years with some games just not running properly or at all in windows even though they should.

Ive found many older games generally run better in Linux now in respect to modern windows, despite the compatibility layers.

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5 points

Why not start today, man? It’s good to practice.

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8 points

Uncertainty, really.

What distro works with my setup: 3700x and rtx 4090?

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7 points

Folks will say arch.

But honestly any modern Linux system with 3rd party drivers will work. Mint pop_os arch Manjaro Debian Ubuntu etc

I’m running a 1660 and an i5 64xx on kubuntu 24.04 Granted that stuff is older but you’ll have the same experience.

Unless you’re running the absolute bleeding edge… You’ll not have a lot of problems.

*Ymmv of course but majority of folks won’t have issues.

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4 points

Give pop-os a try if you’re running an nvidia. It was very much plug and play with my laptop and it works great.

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1 point

You made my day!

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-7 points
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If you had any real intention of making the shift, you’d have done so already. Protip: You know I’m right!

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3 points

Genuine question, what’s the point of this comment?

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1 point

The ‘as soon as Windows 10 can’t x I’m off to Linux!’ refrain is so routine in our circles it’s practically a meme. All someone says when they pontificate like this is that their true priority is can kicking rather than action.

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109 points

This one is particularly harsh since win11 has ridiculous artificial hard stops on installation based on made up hardware requirements. Also it sucks.

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41 points

This also makes it easy to block Win 10 from upgrading to 11, just disable tpm in BIOS. From where I’m sitting, that’s kinda convenient.

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14 points

Ok, but where will you be be sitting on Oct. 15th 2025?

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43 points

That’s a Oct 14th 2025 me’s problem

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15 points

That’s where you grab a W10 Enterprise LTSC iso which has support until 2032.

Already got a surface running it.

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5 points

Dunno yet, sounds like future me’s problem. Mist likely some version of Linux unless win 11 drastically changes course (unlikely).

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1 point

I imagine they’ll have backtracked on this decision long before then.

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2 points

I have a PC I built that was absolutely top of the line 9½ years ago, that still plays most games in high to max settings. It’s a little powerhouse for its age, I often use it for rendering video and it still smokes everybody I know 's devices.

Windows 11 is too powerful for my PC according to Microsoft and I’ve been so pleased about that. If it wasn’t for the fact that I have no issues with my current windows 10 setup, I’d put in some time to jump to Linux. I’m just too lazy to give it the weekend it would take to learn, set up and move my content over properly.

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2 points

Well to my knowledge there are (or at least were) workarounds to get win 11 to install anyway. It of course worked fine, despite saying it needed a TPM and/or specific minimum CPU.

From an eWaste perspective Microsofts decision to force literally millions of PCs into fake obsolescence is obviously horrible. And I honestly have no idea what their motivation even was for this.

As for trying Linux, these days it really isn’t even a weekend. Sure if you want to tinker and learn, you can invest a weekend. But if you want to just use the PC just pick any of the commonly recommended distros and just go. It’s installed in minutes and you can honestly just use the PC for whatever you used to use it before. Just backup/move your data off it and you got nothing to lose but like an hour, if it really doesn’t work as you need it to.

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2 points

I’ve the newest AMD hardware available and I’m not able to upgrade. No idea what they want.

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1 point

Hopefully you bought your fully assembled pc with an official Microsoft sticker already on the case right?

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1 point

I’ve built the pc myself.

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97 points

Lemmy probably isn’t the target audience for this, here’s the steps to bypass the MS account requirement when setting up W11:

  • Configure your keyboard, but before you select your wifi network press Shift+(Fn)+F10 to open Command Prompt.

  • Type in the following command and press enter. Your computer will reboot: oobe\bypassnro

  • After the reboot, configure your keyboard and location settings, and click the option at the bottom of the page to say that you don’t want to connect to the internet

  • Click the link on the next page to “Continue with limited setup”, then follow the prompts to enter a username and password.

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36 points

If you use rufus to make a windows usb you can select to not require Microsoft account and bypass tpm right in the program, just get a windows 11 iso off the site instead of media creation tool

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4 points

Having checked a few Reddit threads by the Rufus dev, this seems the way to go!

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19 points

Thank you. Now that I’ve showed you my appreciation, are you fucking kidding me?

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16 points

Lemmy is exactly the audience for this, thanks!

It just seems like there are are more Linux users because they’re constantly bleating about it in smug, self-congratulary comments

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12 points

Also, if you have windows 11 pro, you can do:

Sign in options Domain join instead Make local account

If you have windows 11 home you can:

put no@thankyou.com Use whatever as the password Hit next after the error message Make local account

I do this shit at least three times a week at my job. It’s the fuckin worst.

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10 points

I wouldn’t try it for a permanent machine as it could backfire when Microsoft trys to enforce it and could lock up the machine somehow (because bigs not because evil corpo)

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7 points

Great mini guide.

I love the weasel words “continue with limited setup” that Microsoft uses.

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2 points

I agree, but I find something else even more weasel-y and annoying when I’m adding a second user to an already-configured W11 computer. If I’m adding them as a local account without a Microsoft account, I’ll use Tab to navigate through the process of creating a username, password, and security questions. After the last security question, I’ll hit tab to navigate to the “Okay” button at bottom left of the window, which seems like a reasonable expectation. Instead, Windows will highlight the “Back” button at the bottom right. If you aren’t paying attention and hit enter or space bar, you have to start all the way back at the beginning.

I know that is a small dumb complaint, but when I’m setting 5 computers up in a row and tabbing through everything, my habits get the better of me, and I’ll have to redo it two or three times out of the five.

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1 point

Legit complaint!

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71 points

This sounds like a problem for October 2025 me

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39 points

Governments, schools, and companies just finished (for the most part) to move to Windows 10. So it really sounds more like a problem for 2030 to me.

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13 points

Haha I remember having to help a school upgrade to Windows 7. Took a year just to get the approval, then another year to get the budget and keys.

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4 points

Yup. Microsoft’s income depends on keeping them on the move.

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2 points

That’s my feeling. I’ve been through this before.

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7 points

Same.

And if it’s like the last four Windows updates, I’ll go right through EoL for a year or two, and finally upgrade because I wanted to play a specific video game, upgrade my graphic card, or it came free with my new PC.

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7 points

October 2025 me: what the hell, why didn’t anyone tell me about this before!?!

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63 points

I really want to see the EU force Microsoft to release a stripped down version that continues to support older hardware.

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10 points

Why? Only hardcore computer nerds would ever want that.

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56 points

Because a bunch of government and business uses 10 and they really don’t want “Recall AI” in there for a plethora of reasons.

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-3 points

Then they can use LTSC until 2027 or pay for extended service until 2028. After that, they’ll just be unsupported.

I’m sure there’s going to be a group policy setting to disable the Recall AI thing anyway.

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23 points
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A devastating amount of computer hardware is about to be e-wasted because they decided to drop support for anything older than roughly 2017/2018.

It’s an arbitrary limitation as people have succeeded in forcing it to work on much older hardware that still works well enough for your avg person.

Additionally, windows used to be a tool now it’s a platform for them to essentially market any number of things and user privacy appears to be the least important thing on the table.

The only reason we don’t see mass adoption of Linux has been 4 decades of software development and marketing that let’s them continue to wear their crown.

A regulatory party needs to humble them and return windows to being a tool.

Imagine if the gasoline companies one day announced that they will be changing gas so only cars bought in the last 5 years or so could refuel.

Now imagine if to buy a car you had to tolerate cameras and other forms of tracking your telemetry just to get to work and feed yourself.

Lunacy yes? They took the “my” out of my computer.

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13 points

Fun fact, there were still computers being manufactured with CPUs that don’t support Windows 11 in 2020, got one of those at work that we will need to replace before then. Thankfully only one, so it’s not too big of a deal.

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6 points

Imagine if the gasoline companies one day announced that they will be changing gas so only cars bought in the last 5 years or so could refuel.

They’ve already effectively did this, and by they I mean the US government mandated it. 5% ethanol has been mandated since 2006, and 10% since 2012. If your car is too old (lots of 90s cars) you’ll have to find a gas station that has ethanol free fuel.

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3 points

The real thing stopping mass adoption of Linux is that few people want to fiddle around with their machines to that degree. For the vast majority of users, it just needs to run and be able to run whatever programs are needed, and the easier it is to do so, the better.

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2 points

Now imagine if to buy a car you had to tolerate cameras and other forms of tracking your telemetry just to get to work and feed yourself.

Sorry to be the bearer of depressing news, but that’s basically already happening in new cars.

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-wheels-every-car-brand-reviewed-by-mozilla-including-ford-volkswagen-and-toyota-flunks-privacy-test/

https://jacobin.com/2024/03/car-spying-insurance-surveillance-data/

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0 points

Why should they have to support Windows 10 when Linux would run fine on your ‘old’ machine? That really puts the ‘yours’ back in your computer, no need for a company to do it for you.

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-1 points

>.>

<.<

…no reason.

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8 points

Can they do that?

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11 points
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It’s not out of the realm of possibility. They have been known to force Microsoft to make changes in the past. As well as Apple and other major software companies.

Edit: Grammar

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6 points

It already exists. Most of the requirements that break with current W10 machines are artificial and can be removed at install time with rufus (memory requirement, secure boot, TPM2, microsoft account).

Still not a solution; you should not have to fight against your OS design choices that much.

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6 points

Shouldn’t they just support Linux more? Maybe fund some driver development but otherwise - win?

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9 points

One would think.

Linux costs next to nothing compared to Windows. So if companies want to cry about having to save on budget, go with the better option for it.

Who the fuck needs Office 365? Nothing has really changed on that software for years, it’s still the same shit. I don’t see anything different on Microsoft Word 2007 from it’s 365 counterpart. People are getting scammed.

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8 points

The UI keeps changing…

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4 points

BuT It HaS aI SuPpOrT NoW!

What a selling point.

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4 points

I’m not too familiar with that side of things but I do believe they do. My understanding is that some organizations are set up as nonprofits and they contribute to the development of Linux.

Some European governments also use foss software for things like email and office.

But it’s easier to throw darts at a big company than lots of small things that add up to something big.

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0 points

I wouldn’t be surprised to see the EU require M$ to remove the artificial requirements and let 10 users on older hardware update.

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