Is windows obsolete now?

[CiH]

A few random thoughts from my disordered brain.

Microsoft's mid to late nineties moment of genius with Windows was capturing the mass consumer market. That is the "Don't really want to own a computer, but feel they *have* to" population. We're going back to the Win'98 'Soho' home office era. For those people, they could have quite happily lived with Windows XP forever and no changes made to it whatsoever.

Where Microsoft failed was with following up. The techbro "Let's completely change the UI, 'cos it's *Transformational* and people will love it" approach, which f*cked things, as we all know.

Latterly, the non-enthusiast population has discarded the lumpen boxes and the faffy operating system that goes with it. Smartphones are all most folk are needing now.

There is a separate discussion to be had about over-dependance on that and the enshitification of 'apps' on that platform, of course.

From a personal superficial point of view, I've found Windows simply gets in the way when I just want to switch on and do something quickly. Especially with the mandatory updates that give you the option to schedule those but in reality they don't.

I work for a government office and the faff factor even affects my work laptop, when you would have assumed that a corporate version would have provided a more streamlined and unobtrusive user experience. When you get a mandatory update happening when you start to shut down, right at the *end* of your shift, it's another little stab to remind you that Microsoft are neither convenient or helpful.

I don't think Windows is going away, it's too embedded in the corporate world, but I can see it falling away at home with Windows enthusiasts a dying breed.

For your information, it's been MacOS for me, since I started to need a grown-up computer, back in the mid-2000's.

[Steve]

Did you guys hear about governments transitioning to Linux: https://www.howtogeek.com/why-governmen ... ernatives/

[CiH]

We did, none of that mentioned the UK.

We'll probably be the last, once Windows has got to the stage of intentionally planting malware and sending data to Trump the Kremlin and only really reluctantly then.

[Kochise]

Perhaps Windows as a Ubuntu WSL launcher :

[Cyprian]

my son just switched from Linux to Windows for stability reason.
I don't know the details, but he mentioned that that some OS or drivers updates were causing him a lot of problems.
Personally, I use both systems Linux and Windows (my main one is Windows) and I don't see the need to abandon Windows.

[Kochise]

Indeed, up to everyone's taste :