Microsoft might want to be making Windows 12 a subscription OS, suggests leak

meiko60@lemmy.sdf.org to Technology@lemmy.ml – 343 points –
Microsoft might want to be making Windows 12 a subscription OS, suggests leak
neowin.net
194

Y'all remember when Windows 10 was supposedly their last OS?

From what I remember that quote was taken out of context.

I could see that. It felt like a weird thing to say. Oh well. My next OS is going to be Linux if I ever get around to buying a new computer. I've been "doing it soon" for a few years lol.

You don't necessarily need a new computer, you could get a new SSD, install Linux there and dual boot for a while.

Very true, but some context, I have a 3080 or 3070 GPU but a CPU from 2009 and a 5400 RPM hard drive with steam games. I'd get like 20 FPS in Elder Ring on lowest settings. My CPU has become a major bottle neck. Over the years I've upgraded everything else but that because that essentially means an entirely new PC

Poor GPU, the rest of the team can't keep up

"Don't worry, I'll have those textures loaded to VRAM in no time! .......... any minute!"

Never obsolete!

I remember reading about that and it is some subscription fee to get replacements. I always wonder if someone is still paying lol

That was so hilariously either ignorant or deceitful when they said that.

I reread that quote (in context) many times, and I've concluded that it was a poor choice of words. He meant "latest". He was talking about Windows 10, the latest Windows OS, in a time where XP, 8, 8.1, Vista, and 7 were still maintained to some degree. I wish so much that Win10 would have been the last Windows OS...

now that gaming is getting better on Linux thanks to proton, I am unbothered

VR Support is sorely lacking, though. And no, the Quest standalone is not a solution - it's an android phone strapped to your face.

Seriously. I've been using Windows for years and every time I've tried to move it's games that stopped me. Proton is literally a game changer. I'm not a hardcore Guild Wars 2 player but I play daily. The game ruins flawlessly with Proton.

Valve 👏

First of all they're going to have to release a distro which actually has, shock horror, proprietary drivers installed on it, because your average user isn't going to understand how to install them.

I've said this a few times but no one wants to hear it, I understand why they can't have proprietary drivers, but the fact that they don't have them is a major reason as to why Linux isn't more mainstream.

I understand why they can’t have proprietary drivers

Who can't have them? 90-some percent of Linux distributions make them available to those who are unfortunate enough to need them.

Good thing Linux ships with AMD drivers by default, no install necessary. Nvidia will have to get off their asses and make their drives less of a pile of dog shit though.

So some drivers are not installed like I said

I'm not casting judgement on whether the drivers are good or not I'm merely pointing out that they're not preinstalled and a lot of people don't even know what a driver is.

If Linux isn't out of the box simple easy like Windows people are never going to switch to it no matter how terrible Microsoft become. They will go to Apple before they go to Linux.

Hang on...

Some distros (mint, Ubuntu) prompt the user to install proprietary drivers during the installation process, it's very easy.

On Windows you have to download the latest drivers from the manufacturers website and install them manually, that's crazy!

1 more...

So some drivers are not installed like I said

No, you said:

First of all they're going to have to release a distro which actually has, shock horror, proprietary drivers installed on it, because your average user isn't going to understand how to install them.

You're moving the goalposts.

1 more...
1 more...
1 more...
1 more...

I look forward to welcoming all the new Linux users 🙂

I look forward to all the complaints on how linux isn't like windows. :)

Will you? Do you? To have and to hold? In sickness and in health?

as always, Microsoft is the biggest advertiser of Linux

Apart from the fact that it’s a bullshit headline cobbled together from half truths to tickle your anger glands… sure.

And still Linux is nowhere close to being a usable desktop OS experience. I'd pick Mac over Linux any day.

with respect, have you honestly tried desktop linux? what do you consider about it difficult?

I keep trying it on and off since before suse/opensuse and redhat/fedora split.

From someone who's first distro was slackware: it has nothing to do with difficulty. Linux, even the most user friendly distros, kinda stuck for a regular non tech savy users

I actually agree with you and I think I like it like that. It's like our own little language that nobody else speaks.

2 more...
2 more...

Linux gives you the ability to be your own system admin.

Most people don't want or need that and have been steadily handing over more and more admin duties of their systems to Microsoft, Apple and Google since smartphones have become widely adopted.

But Linux is totally usable to anyone who had enough admin skills to run Windows XP and not get totally wrecked by malware. It's just a matter of learning.

This makes sense for the edge case of power users. The general use case of Windows won't learn to be their own sysadmin.

Only power users want to be their own system admins. A regular user just wants stuff to work.

Linux is unusable for general population.

my only gripe with linux is... gaming. Not the AAA titles which usually run pretty well, the indie games.
they are usually full of small but frustrating issues.
Like for example steam overlay is broken in celeste due to xna/amd bug which makes is frustrating while using big picture mode/gamepadui.
People playground just does not work. at all. immediately crashes with an unknown unity error.
stormworks? random freezes after minifying or switching virtual desktops if running under xwayland

That shouldn't be a gripe on Linux, it should be a gripe on game developers not supporting Linux. This is like blaming Nintendo when your Switch emulator on the PC isn't working right.

Had me in the first half not gonna' lie.

It's a fun way to trigger modern Linux fanboys who have no idea that Mac OS is a UNIX compliant system that pretty much originated on BSD codebase.

Using Mac OS is about as good of an experience as taking a hammer to my fingers.

Now imagine it is still less suffering than Linux.

Then what the fuck did I do over past 2 years?

Yes, because you are definitely a regular computer user who has no idea what sh is.

6 more...
6 more...

And there's NeoWin again with the Windows 12 clickbaits. This "leak" is just Windows 11 IoT Enterprise Subscription, and there's absolutely nothing nowhere that even mentions the number 12.

https://twitter.com/XenoPanther/status/1710027423981388161

Yeah, this seems like the kind of thing they'd try to push on Business/Pro+ users, where management is willing to fork out absurd amounts of money monthly as long as the per-seat price can be vaguely justified. Doing this for home users would just be dumb. Plenty of people would see the monthly subscription and go "eh I don't need a computer, I can just use my phone."

But... But... But... Russian propaganda! Microsoft bad, Linux good!

Y'all really need to actually click the article and read the first sentence. This has nothing to do with Windows 12, and even Neowin has clarified that right at the top in an update.

Microsoft is a bad company, but it's a little worrying when someone can just say some random things in a title and have it be believed without question, just because it paints Microsoft in a negative light.

It's more that MS has leaned into the subscription model with Office 365 and such.

Windows is already kind of a "Freemium" OS, so I'm expecting them to continue in that fashion. Your are right, the article is mostly pointless speculation that was refuted anyways, but I'll admit it sounded a bit off to me anyways. MS wants people to be running Windows, so they can seem then GamePass subscriptions, Office365 subscriptions, and whatever other services they can think of. As such, I expect the core OS to be very free. Just what constitutes core functionality versus Premium features might change.

It is very worrying that they've detained destroyed their reputation so much that any negative news about them is automatically believable.

Let me introduce you to humans; tell them anything and at least one person will believe it. Get enough of them together and you too can have such crazy beliefs as: sky daddy is real and you make him angry, the earth is flat, the earth is a doughnut, the earth is hollow, you have 5g chips inside your body that allow you to be mind controlled, lizard people.

Need I go on?…

They're too smart to do this ...

More likely they will make the base OS free and charge for the premium SaaS features ... like they already do with one drive, O365 and game pass

Yeah that seems like the more likely move, have a free tier that starts off decent and a premium tier with 'power features' or whatever, and then slowly drift almost everything over to the 'premium' tier until in a few years you won't be able to change your desktop wallpaper without paying. That definitely sounds like the MS way to me.

they've already done various low-cost or no-cost (to the oem) windows editions that you can't change wallpaper, or default search engine, stripped out utility programs included in 'regular' editions, and even one that limited multitasking, disabled some network functions, and had hard limits on ram and total disk space.

Is that what Win 10 X was? I thought it was supposed to be a light build

windows 8 'with bing', and 'starter' editions of earlier versions, are the ones that came to mind.

YUP! And then something like a 1 year free demo when you buy a computer from an OEM ... to make sure all the normies get used to it.

Right of the M$ playbook.

I for once can't wait, it's going to be a fun dumpster fire to watch

Seems a dumb way to destroy the desktop PC market.

People will feel scammed that after one year everything needs a subscription, will dump that shit on eBay, prices will crash, and the market will be dominated by iPads with mouse and keyboards

Linux usage on pc jumps to 72%

Once Linux figures out a better way to install apps to other drive without causing the user to figure out complex systems it will start closing the gap.

It's called a graphical app store. Most distros meant for desktop usage that come with a desktop GUI have a software store. IIRC KDE's Discover even has Flatpak support which leads to a higher variety of apps.

Otherwise, you can install an AppImage, or just a .deb file if you're running something Debian-based.

I've not once seen a software store app (besides something like steam) ask me where to install stuff. Discover, Software Manager, etc. They all just install stuff, typically from the official repos but maybe from flatpak but none of them actually let you change where to install something.

binaries (executables) go in /usr/bin, flatpaks are installed in their own sandboxes, appimages are wherever you put them.

the shortcuts in application menus go in /usr/share/applications as .desktop files which link to the app, so the user generally won't have to worry about where the executable is.

why would the app store ask you where to install stuff??

Because a lot of people have multiple drives. I have 2tb of storage across 4 drives. I want to use all of my drives, not just one. This is a very common workflow. Linux has never truly supported it.

I love when one of the richest companies on Earth (2nd by market cap, only behind Apple) just doesn't make enough money that they need to consider this bullshit. Fuck this infinite profit growth. This is so fucking stupid. Everything is a god damn subscription. Gotta wring out every penny from our customers as the good Lord intended.

it's getting pretty insane isn't it? more and more obvious to the average person how consumer-unfriendly capitalism is

yes it does seem that way, but have you considered that maybe we should just all give all of our money to Microsoft and then just die of poverty? It would make their reports look so much nicer.

90% of all techbro "innovation" is one or more of the following:

"Put it on the cloud!"

"Make it a subscription service!"

"Put it on the blockchain!"

"Add more surveillance!"

Cool, even more reason to stick with 10 as long as I can. Enshitify everything, who even cares anymore?

And you'll still hear "Well I know everything about Windows sucks and now I'm being charged out the ass, but I refuse to even consider switching because [one particular game doesn't work / I'm used to it]"

I was asked why I can't switch to Linux, so I replied listing the software I require Windows for, and then was called a fanboy and downvoted heavily..

It appears that the other guy didn't call you a fanboy. He implied that you might be a troll, before you'd listed that software and after you'd called him a fanboy.

But yeah, it'll probably be a while before there's a Linux version of Adobe Illustrator, and the alternatives are different enough that it'd be a lot of work to switch even if it's otherwise practicable.

May I ask what sw is on that list?

Man, that was a wild ride. Thanks for the link.

Yes, that’s lemmy for you. You happened to point out something in a way that showed some frustration and people started attacking you for it.

They are either 12 or 42 and live in their mothers basement with linux as their whole identity. They don’t read thoroughly nor do they accept criticism.

I‘ve encountered them before. Don’t worry. If this makes you feel bad, consider wording your comments differently.

Maybe expand a bit on why and don’t answer to obvious troll questions, at least not honestly, like the implication that you‘re using pirated windows.

A complete moron could have seen that you were just frustrated with seeing no way out of windows and getting it blindly suggested still. That is not your fault.

Which is dumb. We want adoption, because there's no other way that software will be portrs to Linux. I'm all for a libre base operating system, but I REALLY want some commercial software to be officially supported under Linux.

That Bitwig is supported under Linux is a godsend for beatmakers and producers, but I want Ableton Live on Linux :( and also Affinity Designer. Inkscape is nice, and so is Krita, but there is no serious desktop publishing apps on Linux that focuses on usability AND productivity.

The more users there are though, the bigger the chance is...

So don't listen to those bastard's. A bunch of self-defeatists. May I suggest Vanilla 2.0 when it's finished? :) Then you can try to run some of that software using Wine Bottles...

...which doesn't work for Affinity Designer :(

1 more...

Remember that these are the same people that used to not think twice about $150 for Windows and Office added to their PC or laptop purchase price.

1 more...

Will win 7 be the last ever usable OS from Microsoft, or will Windows 13 turn out decent? Only time will tell.

Win 10 was decent, perhaps better than Win 7 in many ways. It doesn't hold a candle to Linux though. I've been almost entirely on Linux since Vista, and the last time I booted into Windows was last year to get Minecraft Bedrock set up for my kid so he could play with his friend (that friend flaked, so we haven't bothered since).

My kids have pretty much only used OpenSUSE Tumbleweed (my Linux flavor of choice) and ChromeOS (at school).

I think we already know. It's not the technology but the business that spoiled everything since Windows 7. Technically, Windows is probably better than ever today. But for user experience it has never been worse.

Now that after two long years Windows 11 exited the alpha stage and now has an usable taskbar in beta, it starts to be decent. Since they finally allowed "never combine" in the taskbar last week I'm using it as my main os and I plan to upgrade all my win 10 machines (unless on older machines because I'm not going to bother with the artificial limitations and install checks, those will just go to Linux)

Personally, the only reason I don't fully switch to Linux is because of the Adobe Suite, but other than that, I would absolutely make the switch. I'm hoping that if this promopts enough people to make the switch, then Adobe will finally make versions of their Programs for Linux.

Realistically wasm gets good enough, that everything starts to become a webapp so that every app is an every os app.

Monkey's paw: now every app becomes subscription based

Have you tried it on VM or wine and stuff? Try dual booting to test it out.

Have you used a gpu intensive application in a VM with good performance?

Adobe software quite heavily relies on cuda or OpenCL.

Not the poster above, but just wondering here. I don't use Adobe products. I can see a VM not being the best. How about Wine? Can you just install Photoshop via vutris and go?

I tried wine recently to see if I can get Total Annihilation to work. I played with Wine in the mid 2000's and gotten office 2003 to run on Suse then.

OMFG the mess when I recently tried to just run a simple exe that doesn't even need a full installation.

Adobe sadly don't just make Photoshop which is a remarkably good product. Even more so with their new features. I use Lightroom and nothing that exists for Linux comes close. All that needs some serious GPU integration.

DaVinci resolve is amazing and a real alternative to Premiere. The problem I see is binary compatibility. Even Linus admits that the Linux desktop has a problem with that.

I do have high hopes for web tech to evolve enough to make cross platform a thing again. Maybe ChromeOS will help there. VS Code is a good example here. With WebGl Vulkan in the browser and OpenCL that should become viable soon.

haven't tried Photoshop, but what exe didn't work in wine for you? If I load them in with Lutris, I haven't found anything I can't run. Just having wine installed and double clicking an exe I haven't had as much luck, it doesn't find dependencies.

Edit: I misread. I can try out Total Annihilation and see if it works. Lutris + protonGE has been pretty much perfect for me these days

Was it Total Annihilation kingdoms or commander?

Thanks for looking into it. It's just standard TA with mods. I'm sure it can be made to run even more if you buy the steam version.

Linus mentioned in one interview that Steam does amazing work for Linux adoption on the desktop.

The problem is simply that standard Linux software is still a lot of work to get going and maintain. Work I just don't have time for.

I just tried it, only was able to find it in the Commander Pack. Played just fine for me with just double clicking the installer, then clicking the new exe

No, unfortunately. If it was possible, I think we could have gotten everyone that is stuck on Windows because of Adobe, over to Linux by now. Same story with M$ office. BUT that is kinda changing, because for M$ office, we have Office Online and Libreoffice available as alternatives that do the job really well, they got me through college. As for Adobe, there is an online version of Photoshop that you can run in a browser, so hopefully that will get good enough to allow some users to switch to Linux for professionals. Now for personal users they can probably just switch to GIMP. But even then, there's the issue of the other Adobe Creative Cloud Suite.

They would never. In their mind if you are using Linux is because you can't afford windows. And if you can't afford windows then you can't afford adobe

But they used to offer support for Photoshop and Illustrator a while back if I'm not mistaken. That's what's annoying me.

Older versions are supported via wine/crossover, but not official support

The only mainstream professional graphics program with official Linux support was Corel draw, but for a single version twenty years ago, because they acquired a Linux distribution and they wanted to do a bundle os+office+desktop graphics. But nobody bought it (it's difficult to even find a pirated copy of that) so they scrapped the idea immediately

that would be awesome. i assume youve tried foss alternatives to adobe apps. they arent as good usually (ofc), but still great for most uses imo, unless u are doing stuff proffessionally i suppose

I work professionally with Adobe programs, but quite frankly, it's ridiculous that there's no Linux support. Heck, even Cinema4D and Redshift support Linux.

Maybe just stop using shit products, I don't know.

didn't they say windows 10 was going to be the last version of windows? hence why they jumped to the number 10 as it's nice and round.

I thought they jumped to it because ancient, poorly made software would check for Windows 9* to cover 95 and 98, and could now potentially catch windows 9 as well

Java was one of those poorly made software, but it seems stupid to program a check like that. What's the chance that after Windows 98, Microsoft would release Windows 99? The check should just used the version number. If Windows 95 was 4.0 and Windows 98 was 4.1 should have done the check as "4.*" as a future compatible version could have been 4.2 (win me was 4.9) while one with so many changes that it might need a newer version of the app could have been 5.0 (windows 2000)

I said it was going to by my last version of Windows. Coincidence?

I'm pretty sure they used 10 because 7 was build 7xxx, 8 was build 8xxx, and 8.1 was 9xxx, making at least the initial versions of 10 10xxx.

IMHO that's a coincidence of the build counter. 7 was 7600, 8 was 9200 and 8.1 was 9600. Then they changed how often they redo a build, so now it's over 23000

But at the time of win 10 release I saw on Twitter a screenshot of a decompiled ancient Java setup that did a check "if Windows 9*"...

Can't find that again

Remember the rumors over 10 years ago that Windows 8 was going to be a subscription OS?

Valve moves SteamOS to the desktop... The only trick would be getting corporate buy in.

I just can't see people standing for ads in their os at best and paying a continual fee at worst.

Seems like an odd direction when a lot services are moving online and to SaaS based solutions, removing the dependency of a specific underlying OS.

This is just another move in that direction. Maybe the next version will be a thin client where you stream most of your apps. The pricing wouldn't change, only where apps are run.

pricing would change, you think they'd let you run 'apps' for free?

I'm guessing there would be one base charge for the OS, and additional charges for whatever apps you opt into.

“Might want to be making…”

Weird ass attempt at future perfect tense?

Is it wrong? Definitely awkward, but I've seen this construction before. Not a native speaker...

I think it's probably an Indian English-ism. It's understandable but sounds weird to speakers of American English (and maybe other English dialects).

A more natural sounding title (to an American English speaker) would use "Microsoft is making" or "Microsoft is planning to make" rather than "Microsoft might want to be making".

It's English, so it's difficult to be wrong, but that phrase do be weird.

ChatGPT, make my sentence coherent.

So is business moving to M365 windows lics no doubt. It's been on the cards for a while.

This is what happens when one part of their business (Game Pass) does well and they want to translate that success to other operations. What they don’t realize is that Windows is less a product and more a service, and you can’t make money on services. Not for long, anyway.

The whole point of this is Microsoft potentially treating windows as a service

Right, but I meant a service in the traditional sense, like trains or food stamps or whatever. Windows is so ubiquitous with operating a PC at this point, and they’ve literally given it away for free for so long at this point that if they start charging a subscription for it nobody’s gonna go along with it. Microsoft’ll be in the same position they are now, but they’ll lose a lot of money implementing this BS.

Who isnt going to go along with it?

Gotta be like 90% of people have never installed an OS because Windows was already on their PC when they bought it.

To them, its part of buying a PC. They don't consider the OS a separate purchase.

If they make this move they're banking on people not noticing until after they've bought a shiny new PC. After that most people will suffer the cost because they already own the PC and its just "easier."

gonna be great when you can't afford to pay this month and you lose access to your computer

Since when has windows 11 been deprecated? After windows 7 I switched to Linux and all I hear is new windows is around the corner and even worse! How does this company even keep customers, when all they do is upgrade their windows?!

Microsoft only ever sticks to every other distribution of Windows because those are the ones that suck the least.

XP > good Vista > bad 7 > good 8 > nightmare nightmare nightmare 10 > good 11 > bad

Tho if 12 is subscription based this will change obv.

Honestly I like Windows 11 better than Windows 10. I mean I don't like or use either one, but if I had to I'd go with 11 (with debloat script, Powertoys, WSL2 and blocking telemetry with DNS as much as possible)

This is subjective of course but I prefer both the visual and sound theme of Win11 (I despised Win10 in both regards). Plus it has some additional nice qol features like, I think, tabs in explorer?

Anything after 7 is bad in my eyes. I HATE the direction Windows went with the UI style, doing away with the Vista and 7 Aero look. Plus Windows 10 drives me up the wall trying to find the proper settings (is it Settings or Control Panel? Why do we have both?!).

7 was the GOAT but i use 10 now and its almost indistinguishable from what i remember from 7 after tweaking some settings. I do agree that finding your settings can be annoying af.

Someone once explained to me that Windows is like the Star Trek movies - every other one ia good.

1 more...
1 more...

They definitely want to, this news "leak" is meant to determine if they will.

I've been enjoying Windows 10 with some of the shite stripped out and will probably be sticking to that for the foreseeable future. Still, cringe.

with how things are going, I might have to "downgrade" to win 10

Or make the switch to Linux. Been running Mint on my old Dell and it’s waaaaaay snappier and better performing than Windows ever was - all for the low, low price of free!

idk, I've never been able to make it work well. always some issues with drivers. imma blame it on dell putting some shitty proprietary hardware that no ones written drivers for yet?

I'll try again when I build a new PC without any proprietary hardware

I heard more recently Linux has been making strides in driver support, so it’s making me consider Linux for my main rig. FWIW, it’s been working perfectly on my Dell laptop but that doesn’t have a dedicated GPU, only an iGPU, so I’m with you on blaming it on drivers :p

I doubt its GPU drivers, bc nvidia themselves even have official drivers, but idk. mainly my second monitor was the issue. from black screening, to stuttering

they've been wanting to do a subscription windows since they did some limited testing of the concept back with win7.

Anyone got any good reccs for Linux? Preferably something that plays nicely with both laptop and desktop.

I've had a very good experience with Fedora for the past few years, but I've also heard good things about Endeavor OS for an Arch based experience

Like the others say, Linux Mint. If you wanna spend a bunch more time configuring everything and solving issues then you can use other distros like Arch and Debian. For new users though, I suggest Linux Mint.

if your looking for something super beginner friendly, i would reccomend Mint (ubuntu based). if you want something slightly more work to learn, then EndevourOS (arch based, similar to manjaro), because it has Pacman and the Arch User Repository. both have good support and community, and many editions (different desktop environments preconfigured), i would recommend KDE or maybe Cinnamon (better for Mint), though it is not as big of a choice as distro (you can change DEs). KDE has a lot of awesome features out of the box, so its a great choice for beginners

I guess I gotta be the basic bitch here.

Try mint, particularly with their own DE, cinnamon. It really is a great overall experience. I've run it on something like five or six different PCs in my own home, plus two laptops. Zero issues in years. Right now, the only thing in the house that isn't running it is my audio PC, because musicbee is a pain to get running on Linux at all.

That's the only downfall for Linux currently. There's no good audio programs that are Linux native. At best, stuff like clementine and similar options are acceptable players, but they're shit at anything else.

My most recent laptop, it was as easy as popping in the usb drive, installing, and putting it to use. But that's a ThinkPad, and they're super Linux friendly. Mint has the important stuff on it to begin with, so unless you need specific programs, you'll be functional faster than with a fresh windows install. Even if you have a handful of other programs you can't live without, you aren't going to run into major issues.

Mind you, any of the other distros mentioned so far are pretty much just as plug n play too, but mint seems to play well with any hardware at all. Plus, cinnamon is such a damn nice DE

Seems possible enough to me, considering what they've done with pretty much everything else

I'd rather subscribe to windows than troubleshooting linux

You don't need to troubleshoot Linux any more than Windows these days. Especially if you get your machine from a Linux-friendly supplier.

Who and where are these Linux-friendly suppliers? This is already more complicated than windows bud

debian ubuntu fedora..

ive heard fedora was bought by ibm or something now they go close source? ubuntu goes bad too with snaps? debian not for beginners i think and how old does it get? I want stability subscribing is way easier im not 15 anymore

Fedora is not closed source. Snaps don't matter for your average user. Debian is fine for beginners. These distros are all very stable, and none of them are going to make you pay for them when they upgrade.

ok its open source until red hat says so theyre sold now, ubuntu is at the mercy of canonical's whims too, debian i know it doesnt change for a long time, idk how long until apps break etc. I have no reason to dump microsoft thats already working and my windows programs for a less evil big corp

There are plenty of completely community run distros. I'm not trying to make you switch to Linux, just pointing out that your reasoning wasn't right. If you're comfortable and don't care about FOSS, privacy, ownership of your OS, etc., then Windows is fine.

System76, Tuxedo, Juno come to mind. Even Dell has a Linux range I think.

what if i dont want prebuilt

Then you're installing the OS anyways, and with Linux you're skipping the whole "buying a license from a shady reseller" part because there is no payments or license keys involved. And it is much easier to install a friendly distribution like Linux Mint, than to install Windows. The Windows installer looks almost as archaic as the Debian installer.

why assume I use shady reseller? every big electronics chain sells windows licenses. window installer looking "archaic" ? u advocate for amd too bcs nvidia control panel looks archaic too? zero windows issues mentioned so far

Point is, shady resellers make you pay 20-30 bucks, official stores make you pay even more, with Linux you pay nothing.

Now onto the Windows issues:

Crazy system requirements. You can bypass them, but the real question is: why do you have to even bother bypassing them in the first place?

Crazy resource usage. You can debloat Windows with something like CTT's winutil, but the resource usage still isn't close to the heaviest Linux desktop (GNOME).

Telemetry aka data collection, also called spying in some circles. You can disable most of it with the aforementioned winutil, but even then you can't be sure that it was all stripped out.

Ads. Again, most, but you can never be sure if all, have been removed with third party tools.

And can I just ask: why do you even have to bother with using extra third party tools to do all that? In Linux, it comes disabled out of the box, and most of it doesn't even exist.

Worse install process. It takes much longer, you have to go through workarounds to ensure you can bypass the forced usage of a Microsoft account. The install and setup process, from booting the iso, to logging into your installed system takes longer on Windows (I've had it take about 30 minutes sometimes, while a typical Linux install would take about 10-15 minutes)

Choice. You don't like the default Windows-like paradigm? How about a MacOS-like one, or a completely unique one? You want something that has very few customisation options (Cinnamon, GNOME), or something extremely customisable (KDE Plasma, Standalone Window Managers like Openbox, AwesomeWM, Qtile etc.)

Customisability. You don't like the default window decorations? Or your bar? You want it to be a floating dock, you want it on one side, or at the top? You want to use a tiling window manager, with their extreme customisability? You can do all that on Linux. There are projects that attempt that on Windows, but they are just gimmicks at the end of the day, because gou can't actually replace the proper Windows shell. Technically, you could do it in the past, but all of these projects are basically dead and none of them offer tiling so....

Freedom. Linux isn't just free as in beer, it is also free as in Freedom. Thousands of volunteers work tirelessly on the various projects that come together to male up your distribution of choice. And most of them do it for free because they like the project and more often than not, because they use it themselves.

Security. Even out of the box, if you are to compare the list of vulnerabilities for Windows and Linux systems, you will find multiple remote code execution, and iirc, privilege escalation vulnerabilities on Windows. This means that if an attacker wanted to, they could execute malicious code as admin remotely, without ever touching the system.

Exclusive features. You might have heard that only in the last few years, Microsoft has started to include things like a decent terminal experience, the winget package manager, full disk encryption, tabs in the file manager, etc. all of which are features that have existed on Linux for years, if not decades. There are some that still keep on making their way on Windows, when they have existed for many years on Linux, such as floating taskbars (which is apparently coming to Windows 12), while some features (like Changing the position of the bar) are actually being removed on Windows!

I'm sure there's more but that's all I can think of, off the top of my head.

Edit: I forgot, No forced updates. Apparently MS is now forcing updates. Link: https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-to-force-push-23h222h2-update-as-windows-11-21h2-end-of-support-date-nears/

No such thing on Linux. There are updates. You want to apply them? Okay, go on. You don't? Okay, that's alright too.

And something else: you don't have to reboot. You only have to reboot on Linux if you are doing a kernel upgrade. If you're upgrading anything else, it's perfectly fine.

what crazy system requirements i have same motherboard since 2015. win10 supported until 2025, windows makes me change motherboard every decade 😠

every thread i read about gnome people are complaining idk whats going on but its obv not ready yet

why would i want to bypass miccrosoft account i made one with an email in 2 minutes 10 years ago, linux takes 10 minutes less? its ok i install my os once per decade ill take a 10 minute loss

no customization options?I change my taskbar colour, my wallpaper, my starting menu tiles idk what more I need

security issues? as always i dont open random exe and never had viruses

exclusive features? what wrong with terminal i open it and type commands is linux one more luxurious? idc. idk what winget package manager, full disk encryption do never affected me

forced updates, i dont know enough to skip them plus u like security so u should be glad people are up to date right

rebooting system this isnt 2010 i have ssd, sneezing takes me longer, 2-3 restarts per month? whatever

no actual issues, all programs i want are on windows, free is not enough reason to migrate

edit plus ive already paid for my os so i dont earn anything by migrating atm

Then build it and install Linux as you would with Windows?

the argument was troubleshooting linux and apparently the friendly ones are in prebuilts

They were just specifying good prebuilds. The only hardware that would cause problems would be niche proprietary parts on laptops and prebuilds. All custom-builds will work fine the large majority of the time.

the most troubleshooting i've had to do for linux was google and get a stackexchange post and then copy and paste an apt command