Sharing here because of the post from 14 hours ago.
In my case, I thought I could survive a few weeks on a Surface with a fresh Windows install because I’d been planning to sell it. Now that it’s turning into my daily driver with no real end in sight (and with all my thumb drives packed away), I have Yet Another Flash Drive™ arriving this evening so I can go back to KDE precisely because of this sort of bullshit.
I see this as a good thing!
The more Microsoft adds adware, surveys, and shitty requirements like tpm, the more people get finally fed up with Microsoft’s bullshit and finally switch to linux!
People aren’t going to do that. They’ll switch to Apple. Linux doesn’t have the presence in public consciousness nor does it have the benefits for average users to matter to them. Tech users don’t need to be converted, they already know.
Maybe in the West where people can afford Macs.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/934972/india-linux-share-in-desktop-os-market/
Your point is only valid for paid statistica subscribers, apparently. The rest of us have no idea what point you’re trying to make.
Right below the unlabeled graph is this very relevant text :
Though to be fair, even this might be progress, of a sort; years ago, I had a girlfriend who had a bunch of apple products, partly because she worked in sound design. At the time, I had never used Linux and I found using her Mac distinctly unfamiliar. When I eventually tried Linux, some years later, I remember a few instances of going “oh, it’s like on a Mac”.
Those similarities made the whole thing feel a tad less intimidating and probably contributed to (or at least accelerated) me becoming the tech nerd I am today.
I switched in May on my main rig precisely because of OneDrive nags after shopping distros for a couple months on my HTPC. The Surface had been dual-boot from the get go, as I bought it for a bootcamp, but I’d not used it for over a year because of other available computers. Without a functioning AC outlet at home (inverter install is awaiting solar install), the Surface is the only viable option, and I thought I’d be back on my desktop within a month … two months ago.
Windows is more of a telemetry platform than an OS at this point, and Proton’s evolution means my Steam library functions just as well on KDE Neon. I have a few legacy Win-only apps, but my expectations about use frequency from years ago no longer matched actual usage by the time I was willing to revisit my assumptions in spring.
And I’m glad I did, as Plasma is fucking amazing in terms of customizability compared to “you will have your taskbar at the bottom of the screen, and you will like it.”