[A]n INI configuration file in the Windows Canary channel, discovered by German website Deskmodder, includes references to a “Subscription Edition,” “Subscription Type,” and a “subscription status.”
There might be a subscription option or a subscription tier with a windows suite like office and stuff included in it, but for normal windows OS, they’re decades away from going to a subscription only model, at best.
I could see them releasing hardware that’s tied to a subscription that Windows would track, perhaps, or offering subscription as a payment model for Windows.
You’re right, though I can’t see a straight migration to subscription-only happening. They haven’t even gotten Office to subscription-only yet, despite their wish to.
They haven’t even gotten Office to subscription-only yet
Getting closer every day. Having a M365 subscription for Office is now the normal way that SMB and larger businesses work with it and at home Microsoft’s “Family Plan” that includes Office has been doing nothing but growing since they introduced it. Last I checked they were over 50 Million subscribers.
Windows as an OS will eventually be going subscription. You’ll pay the licensing to unlock features like the Windows “S” mode model or you’ll pay the licensing in order to access a Windows 365 Cloud PC that’s part of your family plan.
Most home users will have hardware similar to a Chromebook. “PC” gaming will be done via streaming or you’ll just buy an Xbox.
I imagine they’ll split it into an enterprise version and then multiple consumer tiers, with a “free/lite” version with ads and progressively more function or less ads. Folks that dont use a computer for more than web browsing will jump on that
might as well be that they change their licensing model for businesses to some sort of Subscription. The resale of volume keys has been a pain in their butt for a long time.
That honestly makes sense B2B, wouldn’t hate that as a policy but I do dislike it on the consumer front. But I’ll never use windows personally again so I really only care for how it affects the rest of the computing world
Why? They could roll out W12 with subscription-only plans. Besides the contracts they currently have that specify a specific amount of security updates for X years, they can let W11 and previous versions die. No more updates besides what they need to protect themselves.
It's not like governments and businesses will balk. They already pay a premium for Windows licenses and they'd probably get deals, anyways. Average home users might not upgrade, but all new PCs sold will have W12 and require a subscription if you want to be able to use most of the features.
This is what happens by not breaking up MS more or imposing penalties for anti-competitive behavior.
I’d switch at that point. I’ve only not switched because the pain isn’t worth the reward right now. I’d have to learn a bunch of new apps and hasn’t been worth it.
Start charging a subscription fee. I’ll learn to use whatever tools a priority.
Start trying some of the open source apps on Windows. For example, try using LibreOffice for a bit and see how it compares to Microsoft Office. You may be surprised to find that the difference isn’t as big as you thought.
Like garbage. That’s why I haven’t invested in the time. I write large documents and do lot of research for publishing. As such learning a new tool is a pain in the ass
Favorite OS be damned when you have a fiscal consequence. Switching to Linux full time will cost me money at the end of it and I can’t justify that until it costs me more to NOT switch to Linux.
LibreOffice is fine if all you are doing is writing a Dear Princess Celestia letter, but when you actually start doing advanced things, the jankiness of LibreOffice starts to become wasted effort. If I have to spend more time fighting the program than actually doing work, it’s worth the money for Office. Especially at $70/year for M365, which is roughly 1-3 hours of work depending on what job and such.
Unfortunately the difference is huge. It’s not just the cost of learning a new tool, it’s that 10% of really important features are not there. For me for example it was the ability to apply a theme to an existing presentation in Impress. Well in the corporate world, it’s mandatory.
Using Linux daily since 99, as my only personal OS since 2013, and still struggling with the office alternatives.
LibreOffice works at least as well as Word on its own terms, the problem is how Microsoft deliberately breaks interoperability so you can’t reliably share the documents you create on Libre with people who are going to open them with Word.
Don’t they both use the open format now? .odt? I haven’t needed to use an office suite for a while, but I would have thought that it would force compatibility.
And a lot of linux programs take inspiration from Microsoft’s design because they’re the norm. When you think of a word processor you think of Word, same goes for all of Office 365 actually.
They implemented the ribbon menu in ~2007 office iirc, somewhen around Vista. 2003 is the old WinXP styled one with all these little menus and buttons, fugly but usable. Is that the one you’ve meant?
I’m having to use windows+office for work after a few years of being linux only, and god do I hate modern office’s interface.
The ribbon, on its own, isn’t super offensive to me - its just a chonky toolbar. But why on earth did they have to get rid of the classic menus?! If I don’t know where a feature is, it’s so much easier to skim through text menus than flipping from ribbon to ribbon, hovering over each button for tooltips, and popping out secondary toolbars of icons to find what I want. It’s maddening for someone who only needs to use office intermittently.
I think of Google Docs now because the inconvenience of not being able to have word on my own system without a price caused me to use the free alternative.
@solivine Same, and it just works better. Whenever I need a word processor or spreadsheet at home I don't need that much, and I need to be able to access it on all my devices, not just my home computer. So having the free alternative work faster, better, everywhere, then I don't even see Office as relevant anymore.
Remove the bloatware with a free program like ShutUp10++, and Windows is a fine OS. Linux may very well be better still, but better enough to go through the effort of switching over, reinstalling everything, relearning everything, finding alternatives to programs, etc.? I doubt it. Not for me at least.
I started using a lot of the same open-source tools that are on Linux as replacements in Windows to ease the transition. As someone else mentioned, most of the top projects strive to match the workflows of traditional Windows options. Some lemmy instances have huge posts of top tier open source alternatives to most things you need and somethings you don’t.
I’ve been hearing a variant of this since I joined Slashdot in 1999. “Microsoft really messed up this time, mainstream Linux adoption is right around the corner!”
It legit could be. When Win10 support ends you have three options:
Buy a new PC with the required TPM chip.
Bypass the check in the Win11 installer and hope the OS functions properly after install and going forward.
Install a fully supported Linux that’s optimized for older hardware.
None of those three options are easy, and Linux is the only option that’s free and guaranteed to work. Although to be fair most computers made after 2018 have the TPM chip, and so I don’t know how many folks will actually be running 7+ year old hardware at that point. It’s probably more likely to cause a jump in PC sales more than Linux adoption.
Personally, mine has TPM but Windows is complaining that it didn’t give itself enough space in the bootloader to upgrade itself to 11 and this is somehow my fault. I’m debating whether I’ll bother to try troubleshooting it when 10 goes EOL or just move my gaming PC to linux. I do like having at least one Windows machine around for compatibility but it’s getting too annoying to get caught up.
I’ve been using linux on my laptops and tablets for years so it wouldn’t be a huge hurdle for me to switch.
If I had gotten 10 cent each time I heard (or said) this I would be close to 10 € by now :D
I switched to Linux back in 2006 but not everyone has the knowledge, the capacity or the motivation to do so.
Someday Linux desktop percentage will jump up, but not how the optimists have thought. It's going to be more because the younger generations don't think they need desktop operating systems, leaving them exclusively to to younger gen-X, older gen-Y, various hobbyists, and those who need a desktop workflow at work and like it enough to bring it home. The desktop will settle into its niche, like live theater, fountain pens, and a thousand other mass culture relics, and Linux will still be there chugging along while Windows and OS X (as we know them) slowly molder due to reduced profits in the desktop space.
I have a kid, and yes, there's a laptop she uses, but to her it's exclusively for games and for dicking around in Roblox Studio or TinkerCAD. I've even seen her close a game, settle into her chair at the very same desk, and pull up Youtube on an iOS device. And this is from a kid who is more comfortable with a PC than most of her peers.
It’s going to be more because the younger generations don’t think they need desktop operating systems
We’re already there. The Millennials, and every Generation after them, by and large don’t give two shits about the Operating System, they’re used to working in an App Driven ecosystem…just like your kid.
Yeah, except the Steam Deck has been giving a huge reason to provide compatibility with Linux, and Valve/WINE have been pushing hard as hell to help facilitate it.
Unity pushed me to go with Godot. Unity already had a Linux editor, but this has pushed me to also move from Photoshop to Krita, since we’re in that kind of mood.
I tried several games last night that were rated gold or platinum rather than native on ProtonDB. While some people provided launch options, they all worked flawlessly out of the box. I’m even the first person to file a compatibility report for Furry Cyberfucker, let’s fucken go.
Piper let me configure my mouse and keyboard without the need for GHub. My HOTAS works flawlessly without the Saitek software, since I’m used to configuring buttons in-game.
I tried this last year, and went back to Windows with the same “it’s not quite there” response as everyone there. But I’ve been keeping an eye on this since I had to use ndiswrapper to get Ubuntu to play nice with my wlan adapter, and this month, I installed PopOS, and have been getting along pretty well. I haven’t encountered a single issue or compatibility that outright breaks this move for me, and I’m generally stubborn as shit to learn new things.
It may not be the “year of the Linux desktop” for everyone, but it is for me. If you’re expecting some monolithic mass adoption, keep dreaming, but this progress doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
aaand he replies with a gaming rant. Most users arent children nobody gives a fuck about steam and le wholesome gaben chungus. We want excel and word. Witcher 3 is not a selling point. You live in a teenager reddit bubble.
I have two main concerns with switching. I may eventually switch when these get better.
My mouse shortcuts (Logitech is fully integrated with discord allowing a mute toggle that actually bypasses any keypresses, don’t know if Linus has this as Logitech software on Mac used to be awful)
FFXIV mods: reshade, quick launcher (does work with Linux it says), and ACT (which on windows does a packet capture to parse your damage and has overlays to show that)
I was just reading that ACT doesn’t work will with overlays on Linux. Here’s hoping though! I can’t for the day when I have a solid free/open source Linux desktop running all my games. One where I’m not afraid to update in fear of breaking. One where I don’t need to use docker to host Overseerr and nginx. One where I have the control like I (mostly) do on my work laptop.
I can’t speak for your FF stuff, that’s outside of my wheelhouse. However, Piper has taken care of my configuration for my G502 mouse and G815 keeb. Even the lighting options work. Will need to re-record your macros, probably.
Yup, Chromebooks are already cheap and pretty intuitive, I think this will bump their sales a lot. I’ve ditched windows long ago except for my gaming PC and the PCs at my office (I don’t have a say in those though, I just much prefer Linux
Yup, Chromebooks are already cheap and pretty intuitive, I think this will bump their sales a lot.
Won’t matter to Microsoft at all. You’ll use your Chromebook to connect your Windows 365 Cloud PC . They’ll add it to the Microsoft Family Plan, same one that has MS Office in it, for free when its introduced and then slowly raise the price as people get embedded into it.
Gaming? You’ll buy the WinBook Ultra that can handle streaming gaming or buy an Xbox.
Welcome to the future, it’ll be here in 10 years or less.
It’ll be a legal battle where MS will claim Google’s closed ecosystem as a monopoly and force them to carry the “MS Cloud PC App” in the Play Store. Or you’ll just go buy a “WinBook” made by HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc…
For the average consumer, this would help Apple and Google out more than anything. **People want what they know. **
Exactly, which is why this will probably work, do you really think the average consumer that’s used to Windows is going to switch to Mac when they can just pay 5$/month instead? Lol
As long as the price isn’t ridiculous like 50$/month or some shit, the average consumer is just going to pay it lolol
To start, I don’t think it’ll be a “subscribe or else” type deal. My assumption would be something like a forced S mode unless you subscribe.
Second, people won’t jump right away. To start, word will get around and they’ll simply not update. Then, when it comes time to buy a new computer, the average user will be possibly swayed to look at entry level MB Airs (They often go on sale for like $750) or Chromebooks.
The people who will get really pissed will be power users and gamers who will be forced to shell out money to get back features they had in previous versions of the OS.
I’ve been meaning to install Linux on my primary gaming PC but haven’t yet due to laziness. This would 100% get me to pull the trigger if/when I ever had to upgrade/reinstall.
I’m the tech savvy guy in the family. I’ve always said that I keep windows around for gaming and some level of music production. However, if this happens with Windows 12, I’ll move 100% to Linux and deal with the ramifications. Most of my game collection is on Steam which I know has some Linux support now for certain titles.
I’ve played around with Linux before, but never really wanted to use it. I’ve always just been happy with windows. Without a doubt though, if they started a subscription for it. I would switch to Linux.
I went full Linux (at home - no choice a work) in 2007. It was painful, though way less painful than it was for the folks doing it in the mid-late 90s. (I took a shot and failed during that time.)
Literally each passing year since then, with what I see at work and in the news regarding Microsoft and Windows, has done nothing but deepen my conviction that it was the right move.
I'm years past trying to convince people who don't care about the technical advantages, but I'm really disheartened to see how the telemetry and privacy concerns, and now the idea of software as a service, is not even a blip on most folks' radar.
I will happily just not use it. My desktop usage is already 99% Linux, and it has been for considerable amount of time too. The only thing holding me back is my Destiny 2 guild. The moment that is allowed through Proton, I will be removing the partition completely
I’m so confused why Bungie doesn’t just flip the Linux switch on… they don’t have to do anything else. Cheating can’t be the problem, since most cheats are developed for Windows anyways… as for support, the Linux community is very self sufficient, look at all the games running on through proton out of the box
They’re already struggling with cheaters as is, because battleye has never properly prevented things properly. Supporting another system that can potentially flood their backend with more stuff they can’t handle properly isn’t in their interests.
They claim to have grasped interest in what’s happening but some 200k views and half as many active responses later, nothing had happened
Honestly OneDrive is actually very good as far as cloud storage platforms go. It just works. I paid for a subscription for a few years.
But starting around the 1000th time Microsoft tried to install even more bloatware I started looking for alternatives. For the low low price of “spend a few minutes learning about Tailscale” and buying a few extra hard drives, I’ve got 24TB of storage. My most important stuff gets encrypted locally and backed up to B2. I use Immich to manage my photos, so now I dropped my Google Drive subscription as well. Still on the fence about Nextcloud’s office suites but LibreOffice works great.
The only reason I still use Win11 is because gaming on Linux still has some issues with the games I play.
I doubt that Windows 12 itself will require a subscription. There will probably be a subscription for all the AI trash Micro$oft has been implementing into the OS.
Microsoft: “Windows 12 is free but all our great built-in apps like Candy Crush, Linkedin, and MegaStomp are unavailable without a subscription.”
Me: “Yup.”
Microsoft: “But if you don’t subscribe, you’ll miss out on hot celebrity gossip and the latest fashion news! And you won’t be able to use Bing AI to find great deals on amazing products from our trusted corporate partners!”
Microsoft: Sorry, but your current subscription level does not allow for the installation of unauthorized 3rd party software. Click here to upgrade your subscription and enjoy those great benefits.
Microsoft would be as stupid as your typical League of Legends player for going down that route. Doing this would be an own-goal and would give Linux market share instantly.
Please don’t make me go back to Linux. Linux has become an unusable clusterfuck of bugs, poorly implemented trash, and garbage over the last several years and after using it since the late 90s through a few years back when it was good, I’ve recently decided to free myself from it because I couldn’t take it any more. I’ve accepted that Windows is the only OS that has itself together these days (fuck Apple and its trash, overpriced, hardware-tied OS, fuck the extremely limited ChromeOS, fuck NODRIVERS *BSD, and especially goddamn fuck horrible user interface crappy system mobile OSes), so if Microsoft makes some shit moves to make their OS unusable, I’m just going to throw all the computers in the trash and go live in the wilderness in a shack chopping wood.
Guaranteed this is just some enterprise-level shit someone found and decided to publish for clickbait, though, so I’m not too worried. Too.
I would assume that the subscription they found is similar to existing subscription models for enterprise like E5, which includes Windows 11. I doubt this will get to the consumer level.
For a lot of people, yeah. But everyone assumed that the year of FOSS media software would come with Adobe Creative Cloud, but most people just grumbled and paid it anyway.
Most people would probably end up paying the subscription rather than relearning everything they already know. It may have long term impacts, but, like… I don’t think this would make the average person switch to Linux. If any migration happens I’d expect more people to switch to Macs than Linux over time because that’s more of a mainstream option.
That said there’s lots of interesting stuff going on in the Linux world right now, and it’s slowly but surely becoming a more interesting option for a lot of people. Valve’s work on Proton / Linux in general is pretty huge. I still think you’d need a huge marketing push to convince the average person (which people on Lemmy are not) to install Linux themselves, or prefer buying a laptop with Linux pre-installed, though. It could happen eventually, and has happened in special cases (like the Steam Deck)… But short term I think most people are just going to pay a yearly subscription rather than upend their entire computing life.
Yeah, I use Linux full time and have always used unixy operating systems and have never really used windows. So, like, sure, I think a lot of people could switch to Linux and be perfectly happy… but I’m under no delusions that people will and wouldn’t just pay a little more for a windows license instead. There’s probably a good chunk of people (particularly here) who would be more on the edge and willing to just drop the windows in this situation… but I doubt the average computer user is dying to try Gentoo in the event that Microsoft charges a subscription fee, haha.
Although that said… Microsoft is trying to take some market share back from ChromeOS and iPadOS in the education world, and I can’t imagine schools devoting any budget to Windows rentals.
Depends how Microsoft handles education licenses. I think historically they’ve been pretty good about giving university students licenses for free, and if they consider the education sector important enough (which they probably should) I am certain they could provide generous terms. If the schools don’t have to pay for the licenses I’m not sure they would bother switching off of windows at least. It will be interesting to see how the ChromeOS dominance in education plays out in the future, though!
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