It’s the cost of installing Linux. 🤷
Janette in finance is going to murder whoever tries to give her a FOSS alternative to Excel or forces her to fuck with a VM or web Excel.
We remember the last IT admin that tried to do a platform swap on her. RIP Patrick.
I think the most infuriating part about web Excel and desktop Excel is that they don’t have feature parity.
There’s stuff that works on desktop but not web and it’s really frustrating.
Don’t you know? Some calculations can only be done locally. They are too complicated to be performed over the cloud. It needs to be done on your i3/4GB RAM PC.
I know your comment was in jest but the backend of these apps runs on cloud, the frontend is still using your local resources and is usually a bloated piece of poop to boot.
Electron: I am in this comment and I do not like it.
Jokes aside, MS Office now auto-generates clipart and various other assets via GenAI which obviously is via cloud. They can do feature parity if they want to. But often with MS products, their products use so much legacy libraries, it’s a huge pain for the devs to find their corresponding web-libraries.
I’m pretty sure Office still uses a random API which uses ie6.
It’s time to move to talking about spreadsheets on Linux instead of gaming on Linux
As someone who uses Excel on Windows and Calc on Linux, I can totally understand. There are some big differences so there’s a valid reason for sticking with Excel. Casual users won’t notice anything big, but advanced users will.
On the other hand, if you’re an advanced Excel user, it usually means you’re trying to make it do stuff that it isn’t very good at. If you want stuff that Calc can’t provide, it’s a clear sign you should have written that calculation in R or Python a long time ago.
And honestly, I’ve been using Excel for work stuff a lot lately (no OO or I’d use that) and it fucks up a lot and in maddening ways. Click a cell at the bottom of your multi-page sheet “Oh, you must have been trying to click A5 so I’m going to scroll way the fuck up here”
Copy-paste from other (even MS) apps also sometimes does weird shit
Oh, it certainly has infuriating quirks. Like, if you copy a cell from here and you plan to paste it into 15 different places here and there. Somewhere along the way, you’ll accidentally add some text to another cell, and you lose the content of the clipboard. You need to copy that thing a second time in order to keep on pasting in the remaining places. Like, why is this a feature? Editing one cell suddenly kicks out whatever you had copied earlier? Why?
Fortunately, Calc still has a sensible clipboard that actually remembers what you put there.
I really wish there was a more sensible path from WYSIWYG sheets to full programing language and database. Heck even better find a way to make calculation description procs that can be ran as separate functions for better scalability
LabVIEW pulls off visual programming pretty gracefully. It feels like, it’s written by, and for, electrical engineers, so if you’re not familiar with circuit diagrams, it’s going to take a while to wrap your head around it. However, it proves to me that programming can look very different too. Let’s just hope that eventually someone does something similar to matrices, dataframes etc.
"Hey Janette. Switching to Linux will save the company $$$$$$$ per year.
Your options are:- Create more value than that so it’s worthwhile to stay on Windows for you
- Find a new job
- Deal with it"
That’s not what this post is about.
I understand, and agree, with the sentiment that more people should switch to Linux, but please don’t pretend the answer to every topic regarding Microsoft or Windows is “just switch to Linux”. It is for some, but it derails and invalidates a necessary conversation about shitty behaviour by Microsoft.
I have a machine running linux at home, I’m not afraid of a package manager, but Linux is not the answer to everything. Not yet at lesst.
I can’t refuse to use windows at work, and much as i would sometimes like to, I can’t just go and quit over what OS our computers run. That would end poorly for my livelihood and family.
The purpose of this article is to highlight unfair behaviour by Microsoft, especially towards businesses, which is a topic that needs more attention. Microsoft is in every level of infrastructure in almost every big corporation, and no matter how attractive linux is, that doesn’t make the dangers of centralised IT belonging to one company any less relevant.
We should all do more to lobby for more companies and corporations switching to Linux, but replying with “just switch to Linux smh” is not pushing that agenda.
i think the problem is the game of peoples reasoning to not get off windows.
I do agree its not the answer to move everyone to linux (just for context, my desktop is a modified windows 11, laptop is garuda(arch based), media nas is debian), its just a subset of the people have really terrible priorities.
for those who have hardware with gen 7 intel or order, yeah the situation kinda sucks. If youre IT at a company, also sucks. for those staying on 10 strictly because privacy reasons, is pretty silly given they already made the tradeoff that they rather trade off some privacy staying on windows to have a reletively hassle free experience installing other stuff (this applies even more to those using windows 7, which I find hilarious how stalwart they are not moving off the OS)
outside of how updates are handled and aome telemetry, windows 11 could be modified to have a very close to windows 10 experience, its just a game of people not wanting to make that jump if they are an individual user. I see it as a game of them not willing to put any effort in any direction to fix their situation.
This is the final windows update.
The most frustrating aspect isn’t that the Windows would stop updating, but that everything else stops supporting it as well. W10 gets retired - Chromium browsers stop updating - Websites detect your UA and puts a popup block suggesting you to download a new version rendering sites unusable. Shit’s snowballing for the end user.
That’s most likely going to take a long while though. Win 7 ended mainstream support in 2015 and extended in 2020, the last chrome version to run on it is 109 which was released in 2023.
I would assume that extended support covers built-in apps like Edge.
I’m really glad during the pandemic, a bunch of departments in my company focused on getting everyone Linux laptops. That led to a widespread adoption companywide.
I doubt any department is going to get approval to move to Windows 11 and deal with Microsoft’s fees.
What office do you use?
libre office is great
It’s not that great, I’ve recently tried such a piece of abandonware as the Linux version of WordPerfect (never used it before, just digital archaeology), and the fact that you can show any part of the document as text with escape sequences is just wonderful. Not using it cause I need Cyrillic symbols (which doesn’t work even with single-byte encodings like ISO8859-5 and KOI8-R, I do have the fonts installed) and UTF-8 (that could even be optional, but no).
But that’s about modern formats more than it is about LO. They are too complex and Web-like (inside) for my taste. Everything is better than pre-XML Word formats, of course.
Emacs I assume.
I doubt any department is going to get approval to move to Windows 11 and deal with Microsoft’s fees.
What fees are you talking about? Genuinely curious because I haven’t seen any articles about new or increasing business fees.
I mean, Microsoft isn’t free. Linux is.
True, it’s just that if businesses are already using Windows + Office 365, then it’d just be the usual monthly/yearly cost wouldn’t it? Maybe they were just talking about their office specifically though.
Are your network, systems and infrastructure managing themselves?
We never had windows servers. So there was never a licensing cost there.
Business license. You need to license the OS and get the business version, times however many computers. And we’ll need to buy new computers, get the win 11 business, and deal with all the Microsoft bs like office 365 etc.
Or just slap a Linux OS and have it join the rest of the fleet.
$61 for most folks, $45 for people using Microsoft Intune or Windows Autopatch.
$61 is exactly how much Disney Plus Premium increased their annual price in the past hike few months back, to put it into perspective (from $79 to $140).
So… not really expensive at all I guess
If that’s per machine that’s pretty huge.
It is. And the price of ESUs goes up each year that a product is EOL.
They got you by the balls at that point so they’re gonna squeeze.
How long has windows 11 been out? Edit: Since October 2021.
Why do I use a “health” check to see if I can upgrade? (My PC can’t be upgraded, so I guess it’s unhealthy?)
I guess your options are:
-
Do hacky workarounds to install Win11. If you make an install disc with Rufus there’s a checkbox to do this automatically. There’s no guarantee MS won’t bork your install at some point due to this, but so far it’s worked well for people.
-
Install Linux.
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Stay on Win10 and lose software support from MS and your installed programs. This is risky, and the longer you do it the more risky it’ll get.
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Send your PC to the landfill and buy a new one.
-
And yet, whenever I see it, w11 feels like beta software to me. There’s apparently stuff being added and removed all the time. Broken updates every now and again…
I haven’t used Windows much for ages even though I tried to follow a little what was going on on that front, but it never felt that way with the previous versions.
Linux Mint is also an option 😉
Linux
Mintis also an option 😉Totally agree, especially for those who know what they’re into.
For those who doesn’t, I recommend Mint!
Seconded. Everyone who is not recommending Mint to new users is doing them and the community a disservice imo.
Thanks, I’ll be looking into it now. I really don’t want Windows anymore, but Linux has always sounded overwhelming to me.
Linux mint is not bad. Fedora is another good option. The overwhelming part is honesty the amount if options. But I would just pick a distro and install it, and you’ll have no issues with mint!
So I’ve got a year to get everything I need running on Fedora. My only concern is Linux audio configs as I never have to use audio running servers.
Unless you are running some really bizarre hardware, I don’t really see how you’ll have to worry about any of that with a modern pipewire stack
I haven’t had the chance to run an external audio interface through Linux so not sure how smooth the transitions work with multiple recording sources. According to Focusrite, Linux is supported so hopefully it won’t be too rough.
I have gen2 2i2, and a Solo. Both work flawlessly out of the box
I have the 2i2 and this is what I was hoping to hear. I’ve always had it hooked up to Windows and it drops off daily to where I need to reset the sample rate to get it working again. Apparently it happens on Windows relatively often so looking forward to that not happening on Linux. I also hear that Reaper works in Linux so those are the last of my concerns.
For Windows, my recommendation is that you remove the default Focusrite driver all together, and install FlexASIO. Their proprietary ASIO has been nothing but problems.
Reaper does work great too. Since you’ve brought up Fedora, most of what you need is already there. I would recommend you also install QJackCtl, and the pipewire-jack bridge. Much easier to control your inputs through the graph, especially if you have many mics or instruments
I appreciate the recommendation! I’ll check out FlexASIO and QJackCtl.
Focusrite is so well supported in the Linux kernel the arm builds work out of box.
LOL after typing my last comment I checked the Reaper site and they have arm builds. I may just try it out on the rpi for the fun of it.
I use my 2i4 with an OrangePi 5 as a htpc
That is amazing. I would try it on my spare rpi4 but I doubt Reaper has an arm build.
Pi4 needs an a different build
Linux usually agreed pretty well with my Oppo HA2-SE. I’m guessing you’re an audiophile. I think you’ll have an ok time.
I thought so too, but it skips in wine for me so I went back to pulse. Surprisingly, never issues in pulse anymore
Is it me or is Microsoft being boldly presumptive and an asshole?
To be fair, my wife’s previous company, when it learned that all its Windows machines were reporting back home everything about it (which could interfere with litigation at the time, the company went Meh. ) and it was a medium-sized contractor.
I want to believe big Mic can only push us so far.
The cost of ditching Windows 10 at your business and upgrading to the latest software might end up being a rather expensive process, Microsoft has revealed. Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025, with businesses then needing to pay out for its Extended Security Updates (ESU).
Why would anyone pay for extended support if they’re ditching Windows 10 and upgrading to 11?
I understood it to mean: updating to 11 will have a cost, which comes as no surprise, but this time NOT updating also has a significant cost*. Meaning it’s not a clear cut decision for the beancounters, like the endless delays some firms had moving off XP and 7.
*Assuming you still give a shit about being secure.
Yeah the title makes no sense.
I’m confused, where is ditching 10 mentioned?
It’s the fourth word in the quote.
Haha that took me way too long to get.
No idea what you’re talking about, it wasn’t a joke.
This is just going to lead to people using outdated Windows 10 for various reasons. I don’t use Windows much but have it installed. The trackpad gesture customization is basically gone in Windows 11 but was at least serviceable in Windows 10 (to change virtual desktops and volume easily).
I skimmed the article, but they seem to keep saying that the cost is for “businesses”. So am I right to assume that I can get these updates for free on my personal PC?
No, home and pro EOL are the same date as enterprise. Enterprise editions are allowed the extra time because Microsoft already knows an insane amount of businesses will not be fully moved off 10 by that date and instead of making themselves look bad, they setup this program to tell everyone hey where here for you and also ready to make an insane amount of bonus money.
Idk if the article also mentions, but every year after the first, the price increases for each additional year. The did this with Windows 7 as well, I know all about it because I work for a company that had to do it for 2 years. Once the time comes you replace the systems license with a new key that continues to allow updates to work.
as far i know, this isn’t intented for normal users but more for companys. normal users are supposed to upgrade. you can basically pay microsoft for a bit more time so you can change your workflow to be able to switch to win11.
If it’s going to be anything like XP and Win 7, no, but actually kinda yes.
Microsoft wants you to upgrade to win 11 so they don’t offer the updates for you, but if you refuse they’d still much rather you don’t just run an unsecured Windows for multiple years so the security check to enable extended updates is rather easy to bypass almost on purpose.
But we won’t know until after they drop support.
I’m good. I don’t own local copies of anything I’ll format that shit without a care in the world
Companies will fire whoever is <30 so the boomers can afford to keep using their precious Microsoft until they die(they cant/won’t retire).
30 year olds aren’t boomers.
I wouldn’t retiring next year though, even if I need to be called a boomer for that. Where do I sign?
Really? I had no idea.
So everyone complains about Windows updates, and then they complain about no Windows updates too. Microsoft can’t win.
I don’t complain about updates. I complain about them being shoved down my throat
Windows has a tendency to force install updates at the most awkward times. Especially when you really don’t want Windows to reboot.
And then those updates have a tendency to break shit, in a way that forces you to spend hours fixing it.
Oh wow, people complaining that forcing enshittified Windows updates breaks their workflow are also complaining about constantly having to shell out money to continue receiving security updates? What hypocrites! /s
My humor is lost on many
