this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
926 points (98.3% liked)

linuxmemes

20880 readers
2 users here now

I use Arch btw


Sister communities:

Community rules

  1. Follow the site-wide rules and code of conduct
  2. Be civil
  3. Post Linux-related content
  4. No recent reposts

Please report posts and comments that break these rules!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

In all seriousness it's very exciting, I just don't need to see the same information worded 20 different ways from random clickbait sites lol

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

Quite possibly.

Windows 8 reached end of support in only 4 years.

Particularly if Microsoft thinks they can get away with "Operating System as a subscription" as part of "Windows 12", then they may well be very aggressive about retiring Windows 11. The software companies are falling all over themselves to force people to pay monthly in perpetuity.

However, I'm thinking that Microsoft sees Windows as their gateway drug, so I don't think they'd risk making the base platform subscription. They want people to still get "free" OS that nags them with "hey, give us money for backup storage, and you want office, right, and oh you are a powershell user I see? Then you'll just love renting an Azure instance so we'll advertise that as part of launching a powershell prompt?" They'll of course continue the milk the OEMs for license fees offset by bloated "sampleware", and still ostensibly charge for it to drive the perception of value, but broadly Windows is more a launching board for steering people toward Microsoft subscription services.

If they did throw the switch on "subscription for OS", then they'd risk people just getting ChromeBooks which will steer the users instead toward Google Docs and Google Drive and all the other services Microsoft expressly doesn't want users to get into.