Microsoft's draconian Windows 11 restrictions will send an estimated 240 million PCs to the landfill when Windows 10 hits end of life in 2025
tomshardware.com
Microsoft, doing it's part to make the world a better place.
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The only people that will really suffer from this is businesses. They will have to buy W11, and they will need to get supported hardware. However, businesses usually have rolling upgrades in place in the IT and have probably rolled out many already.
As for home users, with each newer generation, they become more tech savy. I can tell you now, this won't affect as many people as you imagine.
Pretty sure the opposite is true at this point.
I think it feels like this because we have so many more users now than 10 or 20 years before. So the percentage of tech literate users has declined while the amount tech savy people increases. with the pool of users being satiiated i think we will have an increase in the percent of tech savy users again (as old users die).
If we're talking about home desktop users (I'm including laptops, but not phones/tablets), I think that number is on the decline. 10-20 years ago, you generally needed a computer to function. Now, I use my desktop for some games and to do taxes. And last year, I actually did taxes on my phone (I had newborn twins so sitting down at a computer for any meaningful amount of time was not happening). It was a little bit of a pain, but totally do-able. My mom didn't bother getting another desktop after hers died a year ago.
Mobile devices usually don't encourage tech savviness and it seems to be the direction most personal use of computers is going.
W11 can run unlicensed indefinitely with the only downside being inability to customise the desktop background and a nag at the bottom right corner. They prefer to have the users rather than not. Though not sure re limitations in joining domains and the like.
Or, you know, finally just start switching to Linux, get rid of the Microsoft shit, finally. It'll take you a while, but in the long run it'll be cheaper and more reliable.
How will they run adobe apps and play popular multiplayer games like cod, valorant, siege, finals, league of legends, EFT? How will they subscribe to game pass? How can they watch netflix 4k?
Add in anyone who uses Autodesk products
Fuck Autodesk
There are some games that don't work (yet) but gaming on Linux has come a long way and keeps getting better! You would be surprised, what's possible right now, even Hunt: Showdown or other EAC protected games run now on Linux and yes even League of Legends! Adobe is a hard pill to swallow, because if you REALLY depend on Adobe... That's not gonna happen on Linux. But if you're willing and a little bit open minded to get out of your comfort zone you will not regret the feeling of using free software with your freed mind like Krita, Blender, Gimp, Darktable, etc.
Not everyone need to run those adobe apps and multiplayer games. If you don't, you're in luck and should try linux right now. If you still want to run adobe apps and want to try linux anyway, you can install windows in a vm inside linux, even with graphic acceleration too if you have the right hardware. If what holding you back is game pass, then you're already balls deep into microsoft ecosystem and probably won't ever switch anyway.
Yes, the majority of people are content creator or playing multiplayer games with kernel level anti-cheat and know the difference between 4k and 720p.
Don't overestimate the bubble
Everything moves to browser based, by that time, the OS won't matter, Microsoft realized that too.
The people who can't tell the difference between 720p and 4k seem like the least likely to try changing their operating system.
I had no idea this existed, thanks! My hardware is right at the cutoff for Windows 11 support but still runs strong. I’ll have to play around with this but it should allow me to squeeze a few more years out of it. The windows 10 expiration is definitely making me want to try Linux though.