In 2011 I got a 143€ reimbursement from Dell for an E6420 laptop that I had bought for 910€.
Maybe I got lucky but I called the customer service, told the lady I did not agree with the Windows license terms, fully ready to argue my case and she just went "oh, ok, let me just edit a new invoice and wire you the money for Windows plus the Antivirus plus etc.".
Which was extra nice because I had no idea I was in fact charged for the bloatware, but I still got ~50€ for it on top of the OS license price.
This being 15 years ago it feels like a forever unsolved issue. My opinion remains the same, that a personal computer should not be tied to a specific OS. But now with smartphones the hardware/software (de)coupling situation seems even worse.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Dell probably had standing orders to not bother to argue with someone who wanted a reimbursement for Windows, and just get it over with. If you care enough to want that, you care enough to argue your case and make life a hassle for everyone if Dell refuses. To even ask the question is a shibboleth that instantly marks you as someone on the edge of the bell curve.
I also have a similar suspicion that that order has been lost to time, partly because it's very rare that people do that (and Dell even offers Linux machines to those who do care), partly because the support's been outsourced to someone who hasn't read that part of the script, and partly because the world has become more hostile towards consumers during the past 15 years.
I am seriously saddened by the complete takeover of mobile computing by Apple and Google. There is no freedom on your own device to choose your own software, except inside the very narrow constraints allowed.
I switched two of my PCs over to Linux Mint last week. The automatic driver support is shockingly good compared to when I last installed Linux on a PC (almost 20 years ago). It even found a driver for the random no-name USB wireless receiver I bought on Amazon, whereas I had to install that driver manually on Windows.
Part of my motivation was that one of the machines was still on Windows 7, but more than anything it was the incessant push to associate my OS account with an online Microsoft account, and the cramming of Copilot into everything, that have left a bad taste in my mouth.
I havent used Windows in years so maybe somethings changed, and far be it from me to get in the way of someone taking them down a peg, but this bit confused me:
> The vendors do not remove the Windows license, and you must pay the entire price, even if you do not want to use this system.
Surely if you don't want Windows you just boot from a usb drive and install another OS without having to pay them anything. Its not like Windows can stop you from installing another OS, right?
Seems like it makes a lot more sense to buy a computer without Windows preinstalled.
> Device manufacturers and vendors should not impose an operating system or software on consumers
This is not a reasonable expectation.
Hardware needs software to work, and software runs on an operating system. You can't expect every vendor in the work of every kind of product you can buy to offer you a slightly different version than you would like to buy.
The key word here is "impose". I can imagine a world where at time of purchase you would select which OS (if any) you would want pre-installed on the machine. Even a checkbox for Yes/No Windows would be an improvement.
Yeah, one of the reasons why I chose my current Acer laptop was that it didn't come with Windows pre-installed. That made it cheaper and I didn't have to give money to Microsoft.
i think its reasonable that people who sell computer monitors also demand you purchase a computer or other output device from them. Why do you feel differently here? after all, a computer monitor needs a computer or other output device to work, no?
I’m pretty sure (though I have no record of it) that I asked ASUS Australia through their online channels before I bought my current laptop six years ago, and they said no. I never tried following it up more closely. In truth at that stage I didn’t mind having a Windows license, it was convenient for testing certain things occasionally. But I haven’t booted into it for at least three years now other than a couple of times to verify that the keyboard problems are hardware, not software.
This is great. It tells you how many manufacturers make it easy and difficult to get refunds. ASUS is the most specific one, albeit their refund range is between 9 and 65 EUR. Great work.
Why do you assume that? I’m genuinely asking. I’m aware of big companies generally paying lower rates for things, but I believe that’s usually driven by the increased leverage a big buyer has, while Asus has absolutely no leverage, if they switch to Linux today they’ll be out of business tomorrow. It certainly costs MS less to deal with one professional org than a million flaky individuals, but price is determined by supply and demand, not cost. Maybe it’s limited by calculation of its effect on Asus’ wellbeing, preserving them as a major customer?
Asus selling millions of PCs a year that each pester their users to make a Microsoft account is well worth a major discount to them than any sort of additional OEM licensing revenue. Giving Asus cheap licenses lets them sell cheaper units to more people.
And yeah, Asus DOES need to sell windows laptops because the market demands it, but it doesn't mean they need to follow all of Microsoft's rules/goals. ("Pleeeeease put an NPU in every laptop and advertise copilot for us, pleeeease") Giving them a steep discount gives Microsoft a lever to pull if they feel like punishing an OEM later, though with the goal of avoiding anything that halts the sale of PCs with windows on it, which is bad for all parties.
You can't really model that on a supply/demand curve. Microsoft supplies Windows licenses, but Asus supplies a big chunk of market access. A license to software is an infinitely available resource which only has a value determined by the market's willingness to pay for it; a market that microsoft has historically been dogshit at accessing themselves. (Surface product line, for example)
You can get a new Windows 11 laptop on Amazon for ~$200. If they're paying retail cost ($140) for the license, over half that is going to Microsoft. I think most people would much rather buy the equivalent Chromebook for $70. In fact, the equivalent Chromebook costs about the same.
I mean, it's also in Microsoft'S business interest to keep a major computer manufacturer like Asus selling windows machines. That's one of the main reasons windows is the default OS for most people.
After drowning my last laptop in tea I needed a PC urgently and bought ASUS. Had I known that a refund was possible, would I have applied, to get what amounts to £10 refund on a £2K machine?
I am not sure!
The Windows install means my laptop has some value in the second-hand market, should I need to sell. Without it, I am not going to easily find a buyer, because it is still not yet 'the year of the Linux desktop', and even then, stock Ubuntu is not as fashionable as some other Linux variants.
What did surprise me was how flaky Windows is these days. If memory serves me correctly, I needed to boot into Windows to turn 'bitlocker' off, in order to resize the drive for my Ubuntu partition. However, there was no UI to turn 'bitlocker' on again afterwards. Allegedly I need a 'pro' version of Windows to do that, since the UI is just absent from the 'Home' version of Windows.
This process means that I did 'accept the EULA' and therefore denied myself the opportunity to claim back the Windows tax. Drat!
In previous decades I kept the Windows install just in case I needed MS Office or Adobe products to do work. MS Outlook was the 'gotcha', but then they got the web version of MS Outlook working acceptably.
Nowadays I am quite confident that there is nothing Windows that I want, so this use case has gone, yet I have new rationale to keep paying the Windows tax, to 'insure' my PC with some resale value.
I wish manufacturers such as ASUS provided Linux support, even if in a 'community' guise, so as to not upset Microsoft. With my example, I needed to change the power setting on the Wifi card to ensure that Bluetooth worked for the mouse. That was it, yet I had to work that out for myself, with no instructions provided. If I was completely new to Linux then I might have struggled with this or lacked the confidence to spend £2K on a machine that might not run my chosen OS.
In what sense is it unfair or do they get a pass? I’m asking in earnest. My impression is that you may be confused about the dynamics or are just trying to compare Apples to Oranges out of distaste.
No one at Apple paid for a macOS license on your behalf in any sense a legal regime might recognize so there is nothing to be refunded if you choose not to accept the license. It’s one of the many, many structural advantages of vertical integration.
I think some manufacturers offer the ability to buy hardware without software preinstalled and have the software as add-ons you can opt-in. That should be the way.
I applaud Dell for offering this as an option, and for getting Ubuntu certification even on many devices which don't offer it. However, in practice it's not worth much because the standard configurations are discounted, while custom configurations with Ubuntu are not. For example, in this configuration Ubuntu is listed as $140 more than Windows. If you click the info icon, it's because it's $60 cheaper but loses you a $200 discount: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new-xps-14-lapt...
I think they should note that on the page, because it makes it look like Dell is a bad vendor but in practice they're one of the better ones, in this aspect.
Since one can get a lot of models with and without Windows, I would suggest to ask the seller to get a variant without windows.
This way availability sorts it self over time.
Vendors do not want to sell Windows Notebooks, seller just demand only windows notebooks.
OEM/ODM will however only test some linux distributions and very likely support none.
PCWorld in 2009 declined to split the laptop and OS. They offered to refund the whole purchase, but that would obviously leave me without a laptop.
Utterly pointless waste of time. If I see a vendor offering Linux/FreeDOS, I buy that.
If you've had any success in the UK getting a refund, please correct me, but I think time is probably better spent writing to the MP about it as the consumer should have choice when the options are MS or Apple.
IANAL, but consumers usually do have to finalize the installation, in particular activate the license online. From a legal perspective the technicality of a running kernel may not satisfy completion.
Maybe don't buy the product with Windows on it? Without an operating system, people won't buy the laptops, and with Linux, the majority won't buy them. This is bs.
I finally found the time this year to replace my parents' old T-series Thinkpad Windows 8 with Linux Mint. I also upgraded the hard drive to an SSD. The result - a 15 years old machine i5 Dual Core with 6GB RAM now boots and works extremely fast as compared to before. Also with USB and wireless mouse support out of the box - I didn't have to touch anything.
Sorry, if this offends anyone, but Windows (non-Server editions) is a junk OS that I never ever want to see or use again.
I've had some experiences like that, mostly when Spectre/Meltdown were new. (or if I had a dGPU which didn't have good drivers - or.. if there's no hardware acceleration for smooth scroll for some other reason, like chrome on ARM for a long time).
I agree that it's a dealbreaker, and the circumstances in which it can happen are opaque and difficult to troubleshoot.
Luckily these days with anything released since 2020- it's a lot better. Linux still struggles a lot with JS runtimes on Skylake.
While I am throwing Linux under the bus a bit here, I am still perplexed that we use an exceptionally inefficient language as the major application delivery system of the modern day. We complain that it uses a lot of RAM and is slow, but if you consider what javascript is compared to how CPUs think about things, it's a miracle we get what we get... we managed to get a marvel of engineering and the response has been to shove millions of lines of code through it... At some point, yeah, it's slow.
A bog standard Linux distribution boots under 30 seconds with a good HDD, assuming hardware initializes fast.
SSD generally adds 3x to that speed due to access latency for small files.
I remember pressing power button and leaving my PC alone to get a tea or something when I was booting my Windows installation which I had around for gaming. Same with an SSD. Desktop arrives faster, CPU still choked to launch whatever services are needed, fans are doubling as hair dryers.
Yep. Reliability > Speed. Whenever people complain systemd boots slow, it's because it's following the dependency graph set by the distro which focusses reliability over speed.
It shouldn't be offensive. The assessment is accurate. I used to think computers 'degraded' and got slower and worse over time. It always seemed weird to me since logically, the silicon is there. However, when you run a proper operating system, there's no degradation. It's a software problem in its entirety. Nixos has kept my laptop running for almost a decade at this point with no performance degradation. I am only considering upgrading due to fundamental hardware constraints, but the machine itself is fine and still snappy.
It's a fair point but capabilities do degrade relative to what is considered "ordinary every day use software" even if nothing is wrong with the OS.
For instance there's a fair number of old laptops which exist now that can't play full screen 1080p content from youtube inside a browser without extensively dropping frames (way below a smooth 30 fps) because the cpu/video hardware has no support for hardware acceleration of the codecs in use. Even if the laptop has a 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 screen. Additionally they will struggle heavily with 100% CPU load doing something like running any video conference webRTC app (generally equivalent to google meet) in a browser tab.
Complexity of features and more computationally intensive things will still obsolete an old system even if it's running an 'optimal' non windows OS.
So after fighting windows for 30yr i also have started searching for linux os to switch to. Might feel weird initially but its a must now.
60% of my time spending on windows is wasted in refreshing/slowstartup/installing bloat and updates/.
Clicking next > next etc multiple time just to install one software.
Winget is not upto mark like apt and other unix package managers. As soon as i install chocolatey or 3rd party it starts to stall even more
Initially i formatted whole installed fresh no external or extra software just bare bone fresh win 10 install
Yet its slow as turtle. And windows standard installation iso is 5gb multi iso. So it waste a lot of my bandwidth. Plus it does'nt let iso download on desktop browser. And only with phone useragent you get downloadable link, and phone doesnt have much space to store 5gb file
Cherry on top even if i download 5gb file on phone i cannot transfer it to pc as standard usb is limited to 4GB per file. So i had to install additional ssh or feem or other software for wireless transfer. Or had to use non standard browser on phone to capture download link copy it to pc and downlod.
Even after that creating unattended installation is mess and require ntlite or other and hours of waste. And now newer isos despite adding ei.cfg and pid.txt the version selection menu does not appear it enforces installation of win10 home the native laptop was bought with. So hours wasting to upgrade it to pro.
So finally this year i decided to move to linux. Keeping window as secondary. But could noy decide due to myriad of varieties. Choice is majorly between Mint or Fedora
I’m really curious how many people run this kind of skin unironically. Unironically here means they’d actively seek out to make their desktop OS look… 30 years old?
No shade at all, just curios.
I def have all kinds of warm feelings towards the moment I first installed W ‘95 but wow I can’t imagine having that UX as my daily OS today.
I don't run this kind of skin unironically but I do think that desktop GUIs used to be a lot more intuitive in some ways. They were still educating PC users on how to use PCs and so there was less of a temptation to hide features and smooth things out for the sake of pure aesthetics.
(The slide-to-unlock on the original iPhone OS comes to mind as an analogy on the phone: babies could figure it out, but by iOS 7 they figured enough people knew how to unlock that they could make it less obvious.)
A few years back I threw Mint plus this theme on my old Thinkpad T430s. My intent was to use it for one thing and one thing only: writing. The theme helped me trick myself into thinking the machine was unusable for anything else.
>I’m really curious how many people run this kind of skin unironically
Most avoid gimmick Windows/MacOS themes, as they know these tend to be unmaintainable over the long-term.
Keep in mind most Linux desktop options tend to be power-user focused, high contrast for outdoor use, and eye candy entertainment options just waste peoples time. =3
I work in the refurb department of an e-waste recycling company. I put Linux Mint on most of the PCs I list for sale, and I've never had anyone complain.
I haven't tried Fedora in like 20 years, but I remember odd things being broken, adding up to a death by a thousand cuts, but I've never had a bad time with Mint (or anything based on Debian).
Dual boot off a second SSD with a Grub EFI loader (it will recognize the Windows boot-loader on the other drive), and leave your windows install untouched.
Still backup your TPM drive keys from windows before touching your bios settings, or you could lock yourself out of your account.
Everyone has an opinion on distros, but Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop is going to be easiest to migrate over use wise (looks like XP/win7.) Debian family of OS like Linux Mint or Ubuntu 26.04 LTS support most drivers like Brother network laser printers and scanners (check support before buying.)
For most users, Linux Mint will work with your hardware out of the box. Again, do a quick laptop model search to see what others say about your hardware drivers in a specific distro. Note, Ubuntu 26.04 with rtx 5070 ti needs a bit of driver customization, and quite a bit of patches to be pleasant. =3
I don't think Microsoft actually cares (or they consider it to be a good thing) because the default out of box experience on Windows 11 is to drive the average non tech home/consumer user towards a whole array of microsoft monthly recurring subscriptions for xbox live, office365 type products, onedrive, etc. In addition to driving traffic to Bing.
"Oh, you need more backup space! Take this special offer now for more storage, only $NN a month".
Completely true, that. Ive seen exactly as you said with 4 friends of mine when I helped them go over to Linux. On the Win11 side, they didnt even KNOW that they clicked a button to sync their files to some cloudshit account (Onedrive). There's no proof either way, but their files were exfil'd.
But with the horrendous performance and scam behavior, Ive heelped others to Linux to really good effect.
Just theres that 1 person who *needed* Windows and all the abusiv behaviors it inflicts. It was more akin to "Executives dont get fired for recommending IBM/Microsoft", and a utter refusal to try something better. Theyve been a friend for 2 decades, so I gave them the warning, but did help them.
I don't even know how I got Windows 11 at this point 900 reinstalls later. I build all my own pcs. I must have paid for a key at some point, potentially.
You could have bought Windows 7 or 8 then upgraded (free) to 10 then 11. If you ever logged in with a Microsoft account for a user, then the entitlement is tied to your Microsoft account.
> the vast majority of laptops are only sold with a specific proprietary operating system: Microsoft Windows. The vendors do not remove the Windows license, and you must pay the entire price, even if you do not want to use this system. This is unfair and we want to change it! Consumers should be able to buy laptops without any specific operating system, and should not have to pay the license price if they don't want to.
How about this: don't buy a product that you don't want.
If you don't want Windows, then buy a product that doesn't come with Windows. Buy from System 76 or another vendor that sells the product that you want.
The (still limited but better) choice exists now in large part because of many years of activism[1][2][3][4] similar to that in the linked article as a consequence of Microsoft actively abusing their market position to make it hard to avoid paying for Windows.
> How about this: don't buy a product that you don't want.
How about laptop manufacturers stop making shady deals with Microsoft to force its OS on everyone?
It’s crazy how many passes these companies get. A huge number of them are still selling high-end laptops with Intel chips because they signed agreements that effectively prohibit them from offering AMD variants.
Let's stop pretending like any of this is acceptable.
A big store chain in italy (mediaworld/mediamarkt) sells laptops without license as well, of course with a lower price than the equivalent with windows license
Given the very wide selection of x86-64 platform PC workstation hardware which is capable of running linux just fine, limiting yourself to only a few vendors just because you don't want it to have win11 out of the box is really doing things the hard way just because.
It's like going car shopping and having a choice of a dozen brands and 8 or 10 different types of subcompact, compact, sports cars, compact SUVs, full size SUVs, minivans, EVs from each manufacturer. But no, you can only buy this specific model of Toyota Camry or or maybe 3 different models of Hyundai. Oh, you wanted something else? So sorry
I mean, I bought a random Intel N150 with 12GB RAM, 256GB SSD mini PC on Amazon to run Home Assistant on, it came with windows 11 out of the box and immediately got wiped. If I'd gone buying only the equivalent hardware that came with no OS or linux on it I would have paid hundreds more for the exact same thing.
And this is what's wrong with hardware like Apple: it's sold as a general computing device and is able to run alternative operating systems, however Apple doesn't want you doing that. And so they've set this expectation with consumers that: hey we're an ecosystem play, we don't care if you like our hardware and not our software because they're a package deal. Consumers not caring about this is dangerous in the long term, because if we continue down this path the open compute market is going to dwindle and become less and less accessible. You're not a business that has a license to buy open hardware? Sorry buddy, you have two choices: Apple and Microsoft. Good luck! - is where I, personally, don't want to see this continue moving.
Maybe I got lucky but I called the customer service, told the lady I did not agree with the Windows license terms, fully ready to argue my case and she just went "oh, ok, let me just edit a new invoice and wire you the money for Windows plus the Antivirus plus etc.".
Which was extra nice because I had no idea I was in fact charged for the bloatware, but I still got ~50€ for it on top of the OS license price.
This being 15 years ago it feels like a forever unsolved issue. My opinion remains the same, that a personal computer should not be tied to a specific OS. But now with smartphones the hardware/software (de)coupling situation seems even worse.
I also have a similar suspicion that that order has been lost to time, partly because it's very rare that people do that (and Dell even offers Linux machines to those who do care), partly because the support's been outsourced to someone who hasn't read that part of the script, and partly because the world has become more hostile towards consumers during the past 15 years.
Use laptop for a few months, than finally boot windows install...
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/...
Part of my motivation was that one of the machines was still on Windows 7, but more than anything it was the incessant push to associate my OS account with an online Microsoft account, and the cramming of Copilot into everything, that have left a bad taste in my mouth.
> The vendors do not remove the Windows license, and you must pay the entire price, even if you do not want to use this system.
Surely if you don't want Windows you just boot from a usb drive and install another OS without having to pay them anything. Its not like Windows can stop you from installing another OS, right?
> Device manufacturers and vendors should not impose an operating system or software on consumers
This is not a reasonable expectation.
Hardware needs software to work, and software runs on an operating system. You can't expect every vendor in the work of every kind of product you can buy to offer you a slightly different version than you would like to buy.
You can do that with software, too. It just turns out that there's more people who want to bundle their software
I’m pretty sure (though I have no record of it) that I asked ASUS Australia through their online channels before I bought my current laptop six years ago, and they said no. I never tried following it up more closely. In truth at that stage I didn’t mind having a Windows license, it was convenient for testing certain things occasionally. But I haven’t booted into it for at least three years now other than a couple of times to verify that the keyboard problems are hardware, not software.
Got my money back from the store after 15 minutes of quoting the specific law.
The Windows boxes had the ToS on the outside though.
And yeah, Asus DOES need to sell windows laptops because the market demands it, but it doesn't mean they need to follow all of Microsoft's rules/goals. ("Pleeeeease put an NPU in every laptop and advertise copilot for us, pleeeease") Giving them a steep discount gives Microsoft a lever to pull if they feel like punishing an OEM later, though with the goal of avoiding anything that halts the sale of PCs with windows on it, which is bad for all parties.
You can't really model that on a supply/demand curve. Microsoft supplies Windows licenses, but Asus supplies a big chunk of market access. A license to software is an infinitely available resource which only has a value determined by the market's willingness to pay for it; a market that microsoft has historically been dogshit at accessing themselves. (Surface product line, for example)
After drowning my last laptop in tea I needed a PC urgently and bought ASUS. Had I known that a refund was possible, would I have applied, to get what amounts to £10 refund on a £2K machine?
I am not sure!
The Windows install means my laptop has some value in the second-hand market, should I need to sell. Without it, I am not going to easily find a buyer, because it is still not yet 'the year of the Linux desktop', and even then, stock Ubuntu is not as fashionable as some other Linux variants.
What did surprise me was how flaky Windows is these days. If memory serves me correctly, I needed to boot into Windows to turn 'bitlocker' off, in order to resize the drive for my Ubuntu partition. However, there was no UI to turn 'bitlocker' on again afterwards. Allegedly I need a 'pro' version of Windows to do that, since the UI is just absent from the 'Home' version of Windows.
This process means that I did 'accept the EULA' and therefore denied myself the opportunity to claim back the Windows tax. Drat!
In previous decades I kept the Windows install just in case I needed MS Office or Adobe products to do work. MS Outlook was the 'gotcha', but then they got the web version of MS Outlook working acceptably.
Nowadays I am quite confident that there is nothing Windows that I want, so this use case has gone, yet I have new rationale to keep paying the Windows tax, to 'insure' my PC with some resale value.
I wish manufacturers such as ASUS provided Linux support, even if in a 'community' guise, so as to not upset Microsoft. With my example, I needed to change the power setting on the Wifi card to ensure that Bluetooth worked for the mouse. That was it, yet I had to work that out for myself, with no instructions provided. If I was completely new to Linux then I might have struggled with this or lacked the confidence to spend £2K on a machine that might not run my chosen OS.
In 2026 we still have a long way to go!
No one at Apple paid for a macOS license on your behalf in any sense a legal regime might recognize so there is nothing to be refunded if you choose not to accept the license. It’s one of the many, many structural advantages of vertical integration.
Here's a few examples:
- https://www.dell.com/pt-br/shop/notebooks-dell/notebook-dell...
- https://www.dell.com/it-it/shop/notebook-dell/nuovo-notebook...
I ended up not buying their computer.
I still want a refund. I feel pretty stupid.
Utterly pointless waste of time. If I see a vendor offering Linux/FreeDOS, I buy that.
If you've had any success in the UK getting a refund, please correct me, but I think time is probably better spent writing to the MP about it as the consumer should have choice when the options are MS or Apple.
IANAL, but Windows is already installed, so IMO this wouldn't apply. OOBE is not installation, it's setup.
Judge's verdict seems solid though.
Sorry, if this offends anyone, but Windows (non-Server editions) is a junk OS that I never ever want to see or use again.
For document editing or code it’s pretty awesome but a sluggish web is a deal breaker for many these days.
I agree that it's a dealbreaker, and the circumstances in which it can happen are opaque and difficult to troubleshoot.
Luckily these days with anything released since 2020- it's a lot better. Linux still struggles a lot with JS runtimes on Skylake.
While I am throwing Linux under the bus a bit here, I am still perplexed that we use an exceptionally inefficient language as the major application delivery system of the modern day. We complain that it uses a lot of RAM and is slow, but if you consider what javascript is compared to how CPUs think about things, it's a miracle we get what we get... we managed to get a marvel of engineering and the response has been to shove millions of lines of code through it... At some point, yeah, it's slow.
Unless it’s a post-Intel Mac, and that’s all of them these days.
You mean Linux, probably, but thats because Chrome doesn't enable hardware acceleration pn ARM, so smooth scroll is disabled. Pretty rough.
SSD generally adds 3x to that speed due to access latency for small files.
I remember pressing power button and leaving my PC alone to get a tea or something when I was booting my Windows installation which I had around for gaming. Same with an SSD. Desktop arrives faster, CPU still choked to launch whatever services are needed, fans are doubling as hair dryers.
Both scenarios were on the same machine, BTW.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
2. windows + ssd
3. linux + ssd
I know that Linux can greatly speed up startup, but more likely that ssd gave bigger impact.
Anything more than 3 seconds and less than 45 seconds is perceptibly the same, it's the same level of inconvenience unless you're in a rush.
.. but I can't honestly tell you the last time I booted my Macbook from cold.
Worthwhile suspend/resume is a much better goal for the modern computer user... Windows fucked us all with s2idle, including themselves.
For instance there's a fair number of old laptops which exist now that can't play full screen 1080p content from youtube inside a browser without extensively dropping frames (way below a smooth 30 fps) because the cpu/video hardware has no support for hardware acceleration of the codecs in use. Even if the laptop has a 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 screen. Additionally they will struggle heavily with 100% CPU load doing something like running any video conference webRTC app (generally equivalent to google meet) in a browser tab.
Complexity of features and more computationally intensive things will still obsolete an old system even if it's running an 'optimal' non windows OS.
Some people realized this 25 years ago
60% of my time spending on windows is wasted in refreshing/slowstartup/installing bloat and updates/.
Clicking next > next etc multiple time just to install one software.
Winget is not upto mark like apt and other unix package managers. As soon as i install chocolatey or 3rd party it starts to stall even more
Initially i formatted whole installed fresh no external or extra software just bare bone fresh win 10 install
Yet its slow as turtle. And windows standard installation iso is 5gb multi iso. So it waste a lot of my bandwidth. Plus it does'nt let iso download on desktop browser. And only with phone useragent you get downloadable link, and phone doesnt have much space to store 5gb file Cherry on top even if i download 5gb file on phone i cannot transfer it to pc as standard usb is limited to 4GB per file. So i had to install additional ssh or feem or other software for wireless transfer. Or had to use non standard browser on phone to capture download link copy it to pc and downlod.
Even after that creating unattended installation is mess and require ntlite or other and hours of waste. And now newer isos despite adding ei.cfg and pid.txt the version selection menu does not appear it enforces installation of win10 home the native laptop was bought with. So hours wasting to upgrade it to pro.
So finally this year i decided to move to linux. Keeping window as secondary. But could noy decide due to myriad of varieties. Choice is majorly between Mint or Fedora
I def have all kinds of warm feelings towards the moment I first installed W ‘95 but wow I can’t imagine having that UX as my daily OS today.
(The slide-to-unlock on the original iPhone OS comes to mind as an analogy on the phone: babies could figure it out, but by iOS 7 they figured enough people knew how to unlock that they could make it less obvious.)
Most avoid gimmick Windows/MacOS themes, as they know these tend to be unmaintainable over the long-term.
Keep in mind most Linux desktop options tend to be power-user focused, high contrast for outdoor use, and eye candy entertainment options just waste peoples time. =3
I haven't tried Fedora in like 20 years, but I remember odd things being broken, adding up to a death by a thousand cuts, but I've never had a bad time with Mint (or anything based on Debian).
Everyone has an opinion on distros, but Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop is going to be easiest to migrate over use wise (looks like XP/win7.) Debian family of OS like Linux Mint or Ubuntu 26.04 LTS support most drivers like Brother network laser printers and scanners (check support before buying.)
For most users, Linux Mint will work with your hardware out of the box. Again, do a quick laptop model search to see what others say about your hardware drivers in a specific distro. Note, Ubuntu 26.04 with rtx 5070 ti needs a bit of driver customization, and quite a bit of patches to be pleasant. =3
The few times I needed a key, it worked the first time. And for a friend who needed Win11, the upgrade from 10 Pro to 11 worked first time.
I'd never pay more than $5 per Windows key. But I prefer Linux instead.
"Oh, you need more backup space! Take this special offer now for more storage, only $NN a month".
But with the horrendous performance and scam behavior, Ive heelped others to Linux to really good effect.
Just theres that 1 person who *needed* Windows and all the abusiv behaviors it inflicts. It was more akin to "Executives dont get fired for recommending IBM/Microsoft", and a utter refusal to try something better. Theyve been a friend for 2 decades, so I gave them the warning, but did help them.
How about this: don't buy a product that you don't want.
If you don't want Windows, then buy a product that doesn't come with Windows. Buy from System 76 or another vendor that sells the product that you want.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Refund_Day
[2] https://www.wired.com/1999/01/the-non-refundable-refund/
[3] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/...
[4] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/279926.stm
How about laptop manufacturers stop making shady deals with Microsoft to force its OS on everyone?
It’s crazy how many passes these companies get. A huge number of them are still selling high-end laptops with Intel chips because they signed agreements that effectively prohibit them from offering AMD variants.
Let's stop pretending like any of this is acceptable.
> Want to buy a licence-free PC directly? Search for your nearest Linux-friendly shop on LinuxSi! (Italian-only).
It's like going car shopping and having a choice of a dozen brands and 8 or 10 different types of subcompact, compact, sports cars, compact SUVs, full size SUVs, minivans, EVs from each manufacturer. But no, you can only buy this specific model of Toyota Camry or or maybe 3 different models of Hyundai. Oh, you wanted something else? So sorry
I mean, I bought a random Intel N150 with 12GB RAM, 256GB SSD mini PC on Amazon to run Home Assistant on, it came with windows 11 out of the box and immediately got wiped. If I'd gone buying only the equivalent hardware that came with no OS or linux on it I would have paid hundreds more for the exact same thing.