They'll force this shit eventually. Hopefully someone sees this and makes a proper competitor for operating system king sometime soon. I could see Musk doing it if someone pitches the idea to him right.
True, but he also seems like a decently smart business man who is slightly less bad (I know that's bad, but we don't exactly have some paragons of virtue to pick from) who should understand the "privacy respecting" part pretty much IS the selling point. Leave a man to hope.
He's no less bad in his prior tech ventures. He's sold countless products that do anything but protect your privacy. if he made your OS, it would probably respond to a Musk Server every minute via a gps encoder you cant uninstall, or collect every keystroke (similar to MS) or only allow MUSK^TM brand software, or require a very expensive SDK to write for, or something else stupid. musk is based as a tweeter, but the corporations he runs are anything but libre and privacy friendly. Telsa only recently released part of the code of their software that runs on open source. and its old code. Maybe he wont run it like his other companies, but I think its very probable that he would.
I'm using a monthly service called 0patch that provides microcode security patches - it basically patches programs on the fly and/or the OS on the fly when I launch them and the microcode security patches keep up with the current Windows 7 "Extended Support" that organizations are paying thousands of dollars for. There's still security updates for Windows 7 officially from Microsoft but they're hidden behind an enterprise paywall and you have to do some pain in the ass stuff to get them if you try to do workarounds/hacks - 0patch is kind of a bypass for it.
I've learned to live with workarounds for a majority of the stuff I use and play to get it to work.
Win11 requires a gen8 or later intel chip and a similarly modern AMD chip in order to support the level of security (and backdoors) required. There isn't any other reason for this requirement, even chips from twenty years ago can run Win10. Gen7 isn't that old, if you bought a new PC as little as four years ago you could have gen7 and be unable to run Win11.
Thanks to Valve and their work on Proton, you can run almost every modern game on Linux. And you could already run older games on the platform. Standard office software is also no longer tied to Windows, what with everything being web based anymore.
It really might be time to end that thirty-year relationship with Microsoft. I'm certainly not going to spend hundreds on new hardware in order to continue it when that hardware is not dramatically better than what I've already got. My primary gaming pc is gen4 and still hasn't hit the wall yet thanks to video cards being the real bottleneck for gaming and the tech underlying and supporting those hasn't changed dramatically since PCIe was introduced in the mid 2000s.
Things have come a long way but I think you're being too rosy about gaming on Linux. Nvidia still has abysmal driver support. There's a noticeable performance disparity when I move from Linux to Windows partitions on the same hardware, even for games that aren't graphically intensive like XCom 2. I've seen the same limitations across three systems.
I think you'll probably be fine with Stellaris. Though I'd be curious to know how your benchmarking goes. You may even want to consider trying a few different distros. I don't care much for Pop OS but I thought it was supposed to be optimized for gaming. Manjaro has pretty decent out-of-the-box driver configs too, though that distro has its own issues separate to gaming. If you're on Ubuntu you may have to manually point the system to proprietary drivers too.
I've seen some other weirdness with Proton emulation, but ProtonDB is extremely helpful at troubleshooting.
With all the effort Valve put into Proton and getting their whole catalog of games running on their Linux Steam Deck people's reasons for sticking with Microsoft are dwindling fast.
The reasons to dump windows are many. And microsoft just added another one to the pile.
I moved all my computers to Linux months ago. No regrets. I have a windows drive still and can dual boot if necessary. The windows drive is mounted in Linux so I can still access all the files and play any steam games I have installed in the drive, but I haven't booted into windows in months. No reason to.
Some companies do this in their smart TVs on the volume bar. So that when you're changing the volume, there's an ad there. I went back to an older non smart TV.
I had that same issue. The volume bar was free of ads, then the TV auto updated without telling me one day, now it had ads in the volume bar, and in the apps menu, and I think in the config area for picture and sound, too. So I went and got a few CRTs at yard sales, and a flat panel non smart TV for watching movies with.
I think LGTVs are the best in regards to this because they base their OS on an opensource linux distro called webOS, and at any point you could flash those TVs with the non proprietary open source version. This also means your remote will continue to work as well.
Also the TV never auto-updates, it always asks to update.
I did the switch back in 2015 and never looked back.
Any cheap SSD can hold your distro of choice and all the apps you can possibly install. Heck you can even run some minimalist distros in the ancient computer you have in the basement. I am currently running puppy linux on a core duo with 2g of ram.
You can also keep a windows disk for gaming purposes and to buffle microsoft and other spyware companies "this guy only browses tpb".
Nothing new here. They used to load adware on computers to sell them cheaper in the 90s. Adware and an internet 2 year subscription, and your computer was free ($200 or cheaper depending upon location, income, which company was selling it, etc..)
Yo! I used to sell those computers, working for Circuit City. $400 dollars off, with a 4-year AOL/Compuserve subscription. If you bought the lowest-level eMachines, you could get a new (pretty bad, but still) desktop for $99. Thing is, we did the rebate at the store, not mail-in. So, I mean, wow. Computer for a hundred bucks.
This made it hard to actually make money selling computers, since you made next-to-nothing unless you were selling $1k+ machines plus printer plus printer cable plus paper etc etc. Then came the extended warranties, and it all went to shit anyway.
My niece and nephew's grandma got them an emachine in 99. What a piece of shit, but it worked. Windows 98 was the bomb until Windows Millennium, then XP. That was the best. It's been weak ever since.
XP was my OS of choice. I'm chugging along with 7.1, but it's harder and harder to keep it going, as support continues to drop off.
I'm sure those super-discounted computers probably exacerbated Eternal September. And I have a feeling people probably weren't so happy 2 years into a 4-year dial-up internet subscription.
With one caveat. The original release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 nearly destroyed XP with consumers. It broke so many things that you might still be able to find mainstream media releases about it. Most of Microsoft's problems with people upgrading come from laziness. The 2nd most common problem comes from people who are terrified of upgrading and losing shit. They can always point to XP Sp2 for that, because they were there, it happened to them, and they are still angry.
Oh yes. My XP computer came with a great photo editor. XP service pack fucked it up, I thought I had a virus, and used the reinstall discs. Gone. The editor was replaced with some basic bitch microsoft bullshit, and had to reinstall the fucking XP 2 thing. Then the endless updates. The virus scanner not working, new scanner, it stopped working, virus after virus. $200 on top of $75 repair cost, it just stopped being worth the fucking effort. God, I hated windows 7 when it came out, and that was only because my mum bought a new HP for my dad and it was on it and it was so fucking different, and basic. No fucking frills or features.
The first time I saw this in the stupid start menu, I researched a way to remove these in the group policy editor. I've also entirely disabled "Cortana" the same way. Lost the search bar, but fuck you, I know where my shit is. I've also disabled automatic-updates where it forces your computer to shut down in 10 minutes or kill yourself.
If I get Windows 11, and I may need to, I will let you all know how I disabled these "features" using batch files and group policy editor.
Just do yourself a favor. DO NOT get the consumer version of Windows 11. If you get anything, get the professional version. If you get the consumer version, they will intentionally disable user access to group policy editor and then you won't be able to do anything about it.
They've had ads in the fucking start menu and system tray for for years already. You might have forgotten because you spent an afternoon removing them all after you first installed, but this garbage is, unfortunately nothing new.
Between this and TPM, it's pretty obvious that the once open architecture of the IBM compatible PC is slowly being locked down, smartphone style.
They want to own your machine. They want it reporting back to them on everything you do. The goal is a global surveillance state where they're in complete control of your access to everything.
You said 'nigger'? You liked an anti-NATO tweet? You said you don't think a man in a dress is a woman? Ok. Now you can't log in to your computer, you bank account is terminated, no phone provider will serve you, you can't board a train, you can't board a bus, printed money doesn't exist any more. You're fucked.
Yep, definitely not "upgrading" to 11.
They'll force this shit eventually. Hopefully someone sees this and makes a proper competitor for operating system king sometime soon. I could see Musk doing it if someone pitches the idea to him right.
LOL. Musk will peek into your files just as bad (maybe worse) than windows. Musk hasnt made any 'privacy respecting' products, yet.
True, but he also seems like a decently smart business man who is slightly less bad (I know that's bad, but we don't exactly have some paragons of virtue to pick from) who should understand the "privacy respecting" part pretty much IS the selling point. Leave a man to hope.
He's no less bad in his prior tech ventures. He's sold countless products that do anything but protect your privacy. if he made your OS, it would probably respond to a Musk Server every minute via a gps encoder you cant uninstall, or collect every keystroke (similar to MS) or only allow MUSK^TM brand software, or require a very expensive SDK to write for, or something else stupid. musk is based as a tweeter, but the corporations he runs are anything but libre and privacy friendly. Telsa only recently released part of the code of their software that runs on open source. and its old code. Maybe he wont run it like his other companies, but I think its very probable that he would.
Whatever, give it a try.
This is a pipe dream to be perfectly honest.
I'm still using Windows 7.
I'm using a monthly service called 0patch that provides microcode security patches - it basically patches programs on the fly and/or the OS on the fly when I launch them and the microcode security patches keep up with the current Windows 7 "Extended Support" that organizations are paying thousands of dollars for. There's still security updates for Windows 7 officially from Microsoft but they're hidden behind an enterprise paywall and you have to do some pain in the ass stuff to get them if you try to do workarounds/hacks - 0patch is kind of a bypass for it.
I've learned to live with workarounds for a majority of the stuff I use and play to get it to work.
Linux with Wine for when you need windows comparability.
But really the answer is Android which is just user friendly Linux.
Win11 requires a gen8 or later intel chip and a similarly modern AMD chip in order to support the level of security (and backdoors) required. There isn't any other reason for this requirement, even chips from twenty years ago can run Win10. Gen7 isn't that old, if you bought a new PC as little as four years ago you could have gen7 and be unable to run Win11.
Thanks to Valve and their work on Proton, you can run almost every modern game on Linux. And you could already run older games on the platform. Standard office software is also no longer tied to Windows, what with everything being web based anymore.
It really might be time to end that thirty-year relationship with Microsoft. I'm certainly not going to spend hundreds on new hardware in order to continue it when that hardware is not dramatically better than what I've already got. My primary gaming pc is gen4 and still hasn't hit the wall yet thanks to video cards being the real bottleneck for gaming and the tech underlying and supporting those hasn't changed dramatically since PCIe was introduced in the mid 2000s.
Things have come a long way but I think you're being too rosy about gaming on Linux. Nvidia still has abysmal driver support. There's a noticeable performance disparity when I move from Linux to Windows partitions on the same hardware, even for games that aren't graphically intensive like XCom 2. I've seen the same limitations across three systems.
I think you'll probably be fine with Stellaris. Though I'd be curious to know how your benchmarking goes. You may even want to consider trying a few different distros. I don't care much for Pop OS but I thought it was supposed to be optimized for gaming. Manjaro has pretty decent out-of-the-box driver configs too, though that distro has its own issues separate to gaming. If you're on Ubuntu you may have to manually point the system to proprietary drivers too.
I've seen some other weirdness with Proton emulation, but ProtonDB is extremely helpful at troubleshooting.
The sooner devs ditch DX12 for Vulkan the better, I hope W11 and proton will be the thing that kills windows gaming.
With all the effort Valve put into Proton and getting their whole catalog of games running on their Linux Steam Deck people's reasons for sticking with Microsoft are dwindling fast.
The reasons to dump windows are many. And microsoft just added another one to the pile.
Fuck'em.
I moved all my computers to Linux months ago. No regrets. I have a windows drive still and can dual boot if necessary. The windows drive is mounted in Linux so I can still access all the files and play any steam games I have installed in the drive, but I haven't booted into windows in months. No reason to.
Some companies do this in their smart TVs on the volume bar. So that when you're changing the volume, there's an ad there. I went back to an older non smart TV.
CRTs are vastly superior, dont @ me sony bros
My TV updated without ever informing me and now I have adds in the apps tab.
This is why I keep other appliances away from the ethernet cords, and I don't have wi-fi in my house.
I had that same issue. The volume bar was free of ads, then the TV auto updated without telling me one day, now it had ads in the volume bar, and in the apps menu, and I think in the config area for picture and sound, too. So I went and got a few CRTs at yard sales, and a flat panel non smart TV for watching movies with.
I think LGTVs are the best in regards to this because they base their OS on an opensource linux distro called webOS, and at any point you could flash those TVs with the non proprietary open source version. This also means your remote will continue to work as well.
Also the TV never auto-updates, it always asks to update.
I imagine this is infested in the cheaper smart tvs you buy on black friday. You are buying subsidized TVs lol
The temptation to jump to Linux is getting more and more like a reality
I did the switch back in 2015 and never looked back.
Any cheap SSD can hold your distro of choice and all the apps you can possibly install. Heck you can even run some minimalist distros in the ancient computer you have in the basement. I am currently running puppy linux on a core duo with 2g of ram.
You can also keep a windows disk for gaming purposes and to buffle microsoft and other spyware companies "this guy only browses tpb".
dont let your memes be dreams, elemetary/arch are popular or pop os
Have to watch out for distros that are run by woke fucks.
Red Hat/Fedora, for example, changed the names of their blacklists/whitelists to whatever the left calls them. Blocked/allow list?
Arch themselves aren't political but I think they use changes from Fedora for their main branch.
Nothing new here. They used to load adware on computers to sell them cheaper in the 90s. Adware and an internet 2 year subscription, and your computer was free ($200 or cheaper depending upon location, income, which company was selling it, etc..)
Yo! I used to sell those computers, working for Circuit City. $400 dollars off, with a 4-year AOL/Compuserve subscription. If you bought the lowest-level eMachines, you could get a new (pretty bad, but still) desktop for $99. Thing is, we did the rebate at the store, not mail-in. So, I mean, wow. Computer for a hundred bucks.
This made it hard to actually make money selling computers, since you made next-to-nothing unless you were selling $1k+ machines plus printer plus printer cable plus paper etc etc. Then came the extended warranties, and it all went to shit anyway.
My niece and nephew's grandma got them an emachine in 99. What a piece of shit, but it worked. Windows 98 was the bomb until Windows Millennium, then XP. That was the best. It's been weak ever since.
XP was my OS of choice. I'm chugging along with 7.1, but it's harder and harder to keep it going, as support continues to drop off.
I'm sure those super-discounted computers probably exacerbated Eternal September. And I have a feeling people probably weren't so happy 2 years into a 4-year dial-up internet subscription.
Oh god, yes.
With one caveat. The original release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 nearly destroyed XP with consumers. It broke so many things that you might still be able to find mainstream media releases about it. Most of Microsoft's problems with people upgrading come from laziness. The 2nd most common problem comes from people who are terrified of upgrading and losing shit. They can always point to XP Sp2 for that, because they were there, it happened to them, and they are still angry.
Oh yes. My XP computer came with a great photo editor. XP service pack fucked it up, I thought I had a virus, and used the reinstall discs. Gone. The editor was replaced with some basic bitch microsoft bullshit, and had to reinstall the fucking XP 2 thing. Then the endless updates. The virus scanner not working, new scanner, it stopped working, virus after virus. $200 on top of $75 repair cost, it just stopped being worth the fucking effort. God, I hated windows 7 when it came out, and that was only because my mum bought a new HP for my dad and it was on it and it was so fucking different, and basic. No fucking frills or features.
My dad was pretty cheap, so eMachines with OS's like Windows ME were my childhood.
that wasnt adware, it was promotional software.
The first time I saw this in the stupid start menu, I researched a way to remove these in the group policy editor. I've also entirely disabled "Cortana" the same way. Lost the search bar, but fuck you, I know where my shit is. I've also disabled automatic-updates where it forces your computer to shut down in 10 minutes or kill yourself.
If I get Windows 11, and I may need to, I will let you all know how I disabled these "features" using batch files and group policy editor.
Just do yourself a favor. DO NOT get the consumer version of Windows 11. If you get anything, get the professional version. If you get the consumer version, they will intentionally disable user access to group policy editor and then you won't be able to do anything about it.
Hopefully they have a Windows 11 LTSC Enterprise version.
Explain how?
Is anyone surprised?
They've had ads in the fucking start menu and system tray for for years already. You might have forgotten because you spent an afternoon removing them all after you first installed, but this garbage is, unfortunately nothing new.
Between this and TPM, it's pretty obvious that the once open architecture of the IBM compatible PC is slowly being locked down, smartphone style.
They want to own your machine. They want it reporting back to them on everything you do. The goal is a global surveillance state where they're in complete control of your access to everything.
You said 'nigger'? You liked an anti-NATO tweet? You said you don't think a man in a dress is a woman? Ok. Now you can't log in to your computer, you bank account is terminated, no phone provider will serve you, you can't board a train, you can't board a bus, printed money doesn't exist any more. You're fucked.
That's where we're headed.
You will own nothing and you will be happy. Everything will be a subscription