• Toes♀@ani.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    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.

    • Pyrarrows@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      7 months ago

      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.

    • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      7 months ago

      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.

    • Rolder@reddthat.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      7 months ago

      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.

        • Rolder@reddthat.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          7 months ago

          Correct, and those people aren’t going to jump through hoops finding a distro and drivers when they can just install windows and call it a day

          • hydrospanner@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            7 months ago

            This

            And when I run into issues, I would rather be using the OS that is the most common so that I have more options to get good info for a fix. I don’t want problems that nobody’s ever encountered, or for which the fix is beyond my limited technical ability.

            It’s somewhat amusing when I see people on Lemmy proselytizing for Linux and literally while laying out their points to convince someone how easy it is, they’ll talk about doing shit that is already beyond my ability. And I’m not some 90 year old who struggles to turn it on. I’m just a user that doesn’t care to use any OS that I’ll need to take time to learn to figure out how to use it.

            When I start a Windows machine I just do what I need to do.

            When even a Linux cheerleader is trying to convince someone how easy it is, they’re already indicating more effort than I want to put into it.

    • e0qdk@reddthat.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      7 months ago

      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/

    • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      7 months ago

      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.

      • Toes♀@ani.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        7 months ago

        Yeah and abandon so much in the process.

        Linux is wonderful and works plenty fine, but as a civilization we are not ready. There’s still so much that won’t work out of the box, for most manufacturers it’s an after thought if any at all.

        You can’t walk into your avg store and be like I want a computer with Linux that will play fortnite.

        You can’t blindly buy a video game or a multifunctional printer without serious consideration.

        Unlike Windows where it’s the established norm that it will work 100% of the time.

        Sure you can argue that a user should just learn to deal with that and teach themselves how to install Linux and cope with whatever comes up.

        But that’s just unfair to grandma and anyone else that hasn’t made computers a hobby.

      • pHr34kY@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        7 months ago

        I have two Surface Pros that are BIOS locked so I can’t install Linux. They also don’t support Win11.

        I’m not sure what I can do with them.

        • barsquid@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          7 months ago

          I am full of rage by proxy, sorry to hear that. I’ve been thinking of only buying coreboot motherboards from now on, but that’s easier said than done.