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.
Tbh I worked in customer service for a long time and almost always we would give a refund for whatever the customers asked except in rare cases.
And exactly like you said if the customer cares enough to reach out, just give them what they want. Best case they are super happy and recommend you and if you don’t comply they might go ballistic and do all kinds of stuff that will damage the business way beyond what the refund costs (very little)
It's been very funny to go through life discovering such shibboleths exist in so many random places and its like getting a powerup to even find out about them...
A few months ago I bought a scam CPU along with a working computer.
The CPU is almost identical in performance to the one they were advertising —it was certainly malicious— but do I deserve $200 for something I didn't even care about in the first place?
There an argument to be made for harming the criminals even if you deserve it but it just doesn't vibe with my type.
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 would if I could. Which non-Android Linux phone can I buy here in Brazil? Importing from outside Brazil doesn't count unless it has ANATEL certification, customs rejects any non-certified phone.
If not for online banking I probably wouldn't even have a smartphone, however none of my banks supports anything other than recent androids. I feel stuck
pieces of paper is certainly better than bank database entries, but it's still fundamentally the same game: you need to work for something that they can print.
Fair point, but we still need people (like Linux enthusiasts) in Australia to buy these phones and complain to the manufacturer to add support for any missing features needed for 000, and work with the carriers to whitelist the devices. If no one buys these devices in the first place and no one complains about it, Linux phone makers would have little incentive to resolve the issue.
Maybe the Aussie Linux users could get together and work together with Linux Australia[1] to act as an intermediary and work something out.
I don't believe Linux Australia is the first port of call. Rather, conferences/meetups that are supported by Linux Australia would be the way to go. Basically, it needs to be very grassroots, and start with (capable) people who are genuinely interested in this and not distracted by other things that are a waste of attention. Any other strategy will likely be even more difficult and less likely to take fruition.
The crap part is a lot of niche phones got banned because you need to prove it can call triple zero not by default, so it'll be a real pain, and carriers don't really care.
What freedom do you need beyond replacing the OS, which is possible on all phones Google sells? If you want to replace the radio firmware, that isn't something that would be possible without that duopoly either.
The Pixel line is, from what I can see, a tiny part of the smart phone market share.
So, yes, I can buy a phone that I can mostly control (at the risk of losing access to some draconian apps). But most devices being sold don't allow consumer control.
Actually the Point and shoot market has largely dried up, even the 'fancier' point and shoots.
Apple did a very smart thing, using Sony BSI[0] and Stacked[1] Sensors in their phones.
As the 'Camera Snob' in the family my Brother recently asked me to help look for a small point and shoot for his wife for their child's events, and I was shocked at how few options there are compared to a decade ago (And how little most have improved since!)
To be clear, the 'ILC' (what many might think of when they think of when they say DSLR) market has continued to advance and the tech is better than ever, but the simple built-in lens point and shoot market has gotten very small outside of certain markets.
[0] - Back Side Illumination, basically a way to build the sensor that allows more light to hit it, but has some yield implications
[1] - Stacked sensors is again another sensor-build optimization, but it allows for faster readout of the full sensor with less rolling shutter, makes 'computational photography' feasible.
Or passes to buses, trains, planes, concerts, sports arenas, and possibly soon government identification.
There was a recent story about some guy who had been buying season tickets for decades by paper ticket. The stadium shutdown the paper ticketing and left him without an option, except to purchase a smartphone.
Must be a Europe thing, as RealID pissed enough boomers off here in the States that I doubt anyone would push harder than that, and outside of very stupid ticket apps that occasionally won't let me print, I can't recall the last time a paper ticket and my drivers license didn't work. I also can just walk into a bank branch and raise a stink whenever I need something banking related, I guess all of this feels really contrived.
I called Capital One to replace a card this month (either there's no online flow or it wasn't available to me). The default flow to verify my identity before they'd replace the card was to send a notification to the android app. My android version is too old. The alternative flow (which took them 20 minutes to figure out) was to send a text message with a link to an online ID verification service.
Is it COMPLETELY impossible that you could receive that link on a dumb phone, send it to a PC with a webcam, and then take a selfie photo and an ID photo? No. Is it likely to be an incredible hassle? Dear lord, yes. You can't upload photos, so you'd have to finagle with a webcame to get a shot of your ID on a surface followed by a selfie of yourself. Is it possible that in other similar situations, you'll be required to use an android app instead of a website? Yes, I've had that happen.
I think you are grossly underestimating the degree to which smartphones have become absolutely mandatory for many tasks.
> Every restaurant I’ve been to like this has a menu somewhere.
And the best restaurants have staff and chefs that can deliver things that aren't even on a standard menu...
Actually, this reminds me of a time when I saw a person with communication difficulties order at a McDonald's counter. Without missing a beat, the staff member pulled out a large pictorial menu from beneath their counter for the person with a disability to point to. It seemed like a totally normal occurrence to them, but a very novel one to me as the next person in line.
> The phone numbers never stopped working. You just stopped calling
The bank managed to not fix the problem the last 4 times my grandmother called them. Every single problem required an appointment to fix (I suspect they're not even allowed to do anything with any account over phone given how many times this has happened).
Yes, her bank is bad and I've told her to switch. But I wouldn't expect any other bank to actually have good customer service.
On MP3 players: I specifically got bone conducting headphones with on board storage so I could listen to music without carrying another device with me. Look for ones that are targeted towards swimming, they are the ones that tend to have on board storage.
On small point and shoots, I have a Sony ZV-1. It's marketed as a video camera, but I mostly use it for photography. It's great quality, and pocketable.
On compute, I don't really have a phone at all. I carry a Daylight Computer DC-1. Which as a device I recommend, but unfortunately the company backs anti-vax efforts which I found out about recently :\
If your daily life includes interacting with a bank then in many cases you absolutely do need a smartphone many banks no longer have websites that can be accessed with a web browser.
Many so called dumb phones are just Android phones with buttons, real dumb low powered devices are being phased out because you don't get support for VoLTE Emergency
If it can't call 911 you're not allowed to sell it as a phone. Phone calls use VoLTE which is newish technology. Therefore it's illegal to sell older technology as a phone.
Allowed or not, if you bought your phone before the regulations were in place you'd still have no connection on some models, even 4G phones
> https://www.whistleout.com.au/MobilePhones/Guides/Check-if-p...
"But it's not just 3G phones that won't work on Australian mobile networks; certain 4G phones won't work either if they don't support Voice over Long-Term Evolution (VoLTE) Emergency Calling."
What is more surprising is that competitors do not arise. Democracies in general have totally messed this up. The USA should be fined for exerting a monopoly onto other countries. And then fined for penalising US customers with that monopoly at home.
Other countries are free to find a way to incentivize building home-grown equivalents and prioritizing that software or even applying tarrifs to foreign software.
There's no way the typically included 30-day trial of an antivirus or Office costs 50€. It must've been a full yearly subscription of one or the other, that managed to sneak in right before checkout without being de-selected.
Apart from the OS I got reimbursed for 4 or 5 additional items between 6 to 15€ each as far as I can remember, I don't have the details as she only told me on the phone and have no record of it. The original invoice had the following list (although it seemed different from the itemized price list that customer service had access to):
Camera : Software for Integrated Camera (Only for standard Base )
Windows Live
Optical Software : PowerDVD Software for Vista Home Premium and Ultimate, WIN7 Home Premium, Pro or Ultimate
Software Driver : Latitude E6420 Diagnostics & Drivers 1 S
Operating System : French Genuine Windows 7 SP1 Professional (64Bit OS) 1 S
OS Media : MUI Windows 7 SP1 Professional (64Bit OS) Resource DVD 1 S
Software : Microsoft Office Starter 2010 1 S
Operating System Recovery Dell Backup and Recovery Manager for Windows 7 SP1 1 S
AntiVirus : Trend Micro Worry Free Business Service (15 Month subscription)Software MUI
I sure as hell did not order extra antivirus or other kind of software but I guess it's possible there was some "Office and 15-month antivirus included" marketing offer that turned out to to neither be free nor optional...
While your mouse is over the "place order" button, after the left mouse button has moved through the first 0.2mm of its 1mm travel, but before the click is registered, the checkbox next to "1 year subscription to McAfee Anti-Virus" is automatically enabled, to better serve our customers.
I also heard the same thing, hence my surprise, but I guess I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a company simultaneously being paid for installing bloatware and also charging the customer for it...
So your personal computer was not tied to a specific OS and you were easily about to get a refund for the license cost of the OS that shipped in box. So what’s the issue? Do you want hardware to ship without any software?
Ideally. Normaly if you build a computer, there will not be any OS on a random SSD you buy for it. And it's fine. Do I have to build my own laptop to get this nice experience on a laptop?
> Normaly if you build a computer, there will not be any OS on a random SSD you buy for it.
That's why so many people go with pre-built and don't even care about wiping and reinstalling the OS to get rid of the bloat. They want a fully functioning product from the moment they power it on so having the OS is a big deal.
Even without Microsoft's interference, it would still complicate logistics. Two OS options means double the number of SKUs. Some manufacturers offer this option but I wouldn't hold my breath that retailers want to bother.
Yes, Amazon and other retailers will have one laptop with OS, one laptop without. They need to track two different SKUs even if the conversion is easy. When upgradeable, SSD or RAM are also easily "convertible" but the SKU still needs to uniquely identify that "thing" that you have in stock or in the manufacturing pipeline.
“Note: Affected third-party OS includes MacOS. However, it's outside the scope of Microsoft support. For Linux systems dual booting with Windows, Windows will update the certificates that Linux relies on.”
That might be true. And has nothing to do with your previous ridiculous claim. Your comment is further proof you lack even basic understanding of UEFI. But I sense the feeling that logic won't change your emotional position on the matter, so I'm not going to bother you further.
Someone probably buried your post for Sealioning, but in general even trying to install a clean windows 11 pro OS over a windows 11 Home embedded firmware license/hardware-signature on a gaming laptop is too complex for many users.
In that case, I suggest (not having tried it) that updating the OS and then resetting it might work better? Does Windows still have the reset option it had in win8?
The issue is the update license is different than full install licenses, and the red sticker oem licenses people scam are hardware specific.
You usually must pay for windows twice (or more if you don't know) to be Pro license compliant for commercial use.
Setting a machine up for multi-boot Linux/BSD is not always a simple process with every BIOS firmware, and configuring Windows to stop automatic encryption of NTFS volumes is nontrivial. Even with an offline install for games, if the OneDrive account is ever activated... files are upped to Microsoft cloud anyway.
Running an offline win11 account with a recent "rclone gui" NFS mounter for cloud APIs is a better option:
Thankfully, disarming Win11 TPM/Drive-boobytrap/BS-encryption/Spam is easy with Rufus, O&O ShutUp10, and Copilot removal (note undocumented AI API areas suggested RAT/snitch-ware... the final straw with Microsoft BS around here...)
I also raised an eyebrow at "the vast majority of laptops are only sold with a specific proprietary operating system: Microsoft Windows", but after looking at some estimates it seems legit. Probably only about 1 in 10 laptops is a Mac. Software developers really just live in a different world than normal people.
It got me thinking though: what is a laptop? People probably count Chromebooks, and that seems fair. Is a SteamDeck a laptop? Is an iPad with a keyboard case a laptop? Is a Microsoft Surface Pro a laptop when it has its keyboard attached?
A laptop is whatever uses a rigid clamshell form factor with a screen that folds down over the keyboard. A screen with a flippy floppy detachable keyboard is not that, so:
- A chrome book is a laptop, it uses the laptop form factor.
- A Steamdeck is not a laptop. It does not use the laptop form factor.
- An iPad is not a laptop. It does not use the laptop form factor out of the box, it needs peripherals to even pretend to be one.
- A surface Pro is also not a laptop, but the Surface Laptop is. Just "having a flippy floppy magnetic keyboard pre-bundled with it" doesn't make a tablet a laptop. Having a rigid clamshell design makes it a laptop.
And yes, that makes the Asus Zenbook a laptop, because it is. It just has the circuitry in the screen instead of the base. Hell, Asus literally calls them laptops themselves.
all of our engineering teams use macs except one dude who carries his early 2000s windows4life gamer energy with him wherever he goes. as it turns out if you aren't specifically like doing cuda or dx stuff having unix and being able to compile quickly, emulate or translate every deployment target architecture, great ppw ... lends a lot of credit towards many domains of software engineering. it feels like it collapsed multiple devices into one. i just spin up a windows environment if i need to support some janky legacy windows only thing.
Software devs absolutely live in their own little world. Regular people don’t even know what an OS is. All the details of computing have become so abstracted away from the user that they’re completely unaware.
That's exactly the situation with the iPad Pro, with the exception that Microsoft didn't castrate it. I've had one and used it for professional development; it's not very ergonomic when used on your lap (but still usable), so it's not to everyone's liking. Still, I'd use a modern one if it were 100% Linux-compatible, and wouldn't miss anything.
> Does a SteamDeck become a laptop if you install Windows on it?
Whether a laptop requires a hinge to be defined as such can b matter of personal preference. For me (and, again, for Apple), it's not a requirement. 7 inches is a dealbreaker for me, although I think Stallman used a 7-inch laptop.
Try finding a PC manufacturer that lets you choose Linux instead of Windows when customizing your PC. I remember one or two companies offering it, and even giving a discount for it (~$100?), but the rest simply default to Windows.
Others let you choose Linux, but you have to pay to remove Windows. They can't install their bloatware (or are unwilling to, anyways), so you have to pay the unsubsidized price.
> Software developers really just live in a different world than normal people.
They actually don't, which is why the vast majority of software developers would never "raise an eyebrow" to the very well known obviously true statement that the vast majority of laptops are only sold with Microsoft Windows, regardless of what they themselves or their coworkers use.
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.
And then people go to Best Buy and see there's a model on the shelf that looks to be the exact same but its $60 cheaper, so they buy that and then realize they have no idea what to do with it so I guess this brand of laptop just sucks, Macs don't have that problem I guess I'll just buy those instead.
Apple should also be forced to allow the user freedom to choose at least one other OS. But maybe thats too much to ask. I think it's not too much too ask, but I am probably an outlier.
Dont start about Asahi please. I know it exists.
Okay we force Apple to give the consumer freedom to choose at least one other OS. But none other exists, so what should Apple do? Create a second operating system themselves to give the illusion of choice? Be forced to bankroll an independent team such as Asahi (which you don't seem to consider valid)?
Well, you asked what's wrong with it, and being entirely unusable on a lot of the target hardware its trying to address sure seems like a problem. I didn't realize I needed to give them money to properly speak true statements.
I don't blame them, it's not like Apple makes it easy for them. They're definitely working hard on the project and I wish them luck. But one can't act like it's actually a viable OS to generally run on M series hardware. It kind of works on a select few models.
I have bought many computers that have Windows installed, they have all been trivial to replace with Linux installs. On almost all of them, I never even booted into windows once.
Was it wasted money going to Microsoft? I don't know, I bought the computers because the price point worked for me. I have also built a lot of computers myself, but most of the time my home built machines end up costing more than the pre-built one that has windows installed (although my parts are probably nicer, but maybe not always).
This is like a ton of things you buy. Sometimes they include parts you don't want, but if the price is good, it doesn't matter that you discard part of it.
The payment is the real problem here. It's like if every meal you bought included a $1 fee to McDonald's even though they had nothing to do with it. That would be very evil anti-competitive stuff, right? Or if the fee is for a McDonald's promotional poster they put in the box and you throw away, same thing.
Linux wouldn't be zero. There's still a cost involved in installing the OS, even if it's miniscule and automatable. You can bet your life that laptop manufacturers are going to charge you for it.
And properly supporting it as well. Look at all the major brands supporting Linux on their computers, several even go so far as maintaining their own distros.
I may be of a different age, but in my time it was common to buy computers without any OS pre-installed. It was on you to install one (from CD, floppy, whatever).
Of course, vendors selling PCs often also sold OS's...
But I also believe your recollection is erroneous or must differ by region because I was there as early as the 80s and computers sold without an operating system weren't common. If you were buying a PC clone in the 90s you could buy it without the Windows license, of course, but the default was to include it.
Even before PCs, computers typically shipped with BASIC, which was their operating system of sort. Macs, Amigas, they all shipped with an OS as well.
Maybe not, but as I understand it, languages were one of Gates' key bargaining chips in negotiating the terms of the MS/PC-DOS deal that put Microsoft in a position to start licensing to OEM's on a per-CPU basis in the first place.
I had an XT. Not IBM. It had BASIC ROM. Everyone I know who had an XT (8088 or 8086) had BASIC in the ROM. None was IBM and all were different companies.
Actually (and I'm being pedantic here, I admit), only IBM made an XT, the others were all XT-clones or compatibles. And you could get a compatible ROM that contained BASIC. I also owned a non-IBM XT clone, which did not have BASIC in ROM.
Yes, it may take some work these days. I was addressing the claim that it's "not a reasonable expectation" with a pretty poor rationale provided. The rationale applied equally well in the 80's and 90's, and no one then said "It's unreasonable to sell without an OS."
Sorry but this isn't the 70s. Even businesses expect devices to somewhat work out of the box so it's completely unreasonable to everyone except people who buy things like Raspberry PI, which are a tiny minority.
I'm sure they did sell computers with Windows pre-installed in the 90's. But almost every place also sold computers without any OS. It was not at all unusual.
The computing world wasn't just in the US, you know. Microsoft didn't have a deal with all PC manufacturers in the world.
Oh I am interested in buying a piece of hardware, they thought it would be convenient for customers to pre-install software I don’t want, and make money with it (the real convenience), and if I am to demand that I pay/ask only for the hardware, my expectation is unreasonable.
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 hear what you're saying, but there are issues when you continue the line of thought one step.
Imposing Windows implies requiring agreements to unknown eula's at the time of purchase. Consider Windows is there in the first place because of anticompetitive practices. Stuff like this is unreasonable too. I think moreso. I guess it comes down to if you think consumers or big tech is more deserving of protection.
Also these models are usually expensive. Cheap/low-end models don't have this option ever. Depending on the financial situation, the "just buy the alternative" may not be possible. Some people here need to touch grass, this campaign is probably not particularly concerned with their configured 2k+ dev machines.
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 was part of an event called "Windows Refund Day" in 1999 (I think) to draw attention to this issue. We had a march to a Microsoft office to ask for refunds (unsuccessfully). It was fun, but it's 27 years later and it's still a problem.
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.
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.
Better option is to wipe the drive and install Linux. The Windows OEM license is tied to the hardware, so you can always reinstall Windows Home from scratch later if you end up reselling it.
That said, calling Windows flaky for shipping disk encryption on a laptop seems odd to me. On a device that’s easy to steal, that’s a feature you want. You can turn the cut-down BitLocker that Home gets back on in the security settings: search “Device Encryption” in the Start menu and you should land on it.
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)
Cheaper → more licenses and also more post-license profit, yes, agreed, hence my (admittedly oblique) wellness comment, but this is also true of direct to consumer prices, and my question is specifically about any price difference between the two.
PC makers intermediating other MS objectives makes sense.
Re market access, does Asus actually increase the size of the Windows market, or sell to people who’d otherwise buy Windows another way? I think you’re saying yes, a big PC maker plays a part in getting more people to buy Windows more often, and that’s the biggest thing I was missing.
That’s a narrow view to suggest it’s just Microsoft’s Copilot that’s pushing NPU’s on PCs. You need some NPU or GPU for system requirements not just for Copilot but for any local models including Gemini Nano in Chrome, open models, models running on Linux without Windows at all. Intel and AMD are both making chips with NPU’s on the die just like they have made them with integrated GPUs.
AI isn’t going away any more than graphics acceleration is. You can deliberately buy a low-power board or notebook that doesn’t have those capabilities if you want. It will save you money too.
What? I think you're latching onto something meant as a general example, as something specific. Microsoft has many goals they'd like to push on their OEMs, I'm sure. You're having a different conversation.
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.
That’s not how OEM pricing works. Depending on the retail price and volume Microsoft will lower license cost close to $0. No large manufacturer is paying $140 to license Windows for a notebook selling $200. That’s the full retail price for a consumer building their own PC. That said usable Windows notebooks are usually a bit more than that these days. And just the RAM alone to run usable Windows 11 is pushing $70 now.
That is exactly the point of the comment you're responding to. "Why do you assume that [OEMs pay much less than retail]?" Well, $200 Windows laptops exist, and $140 of that going to a Windows license is not a credible idea.
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.
Better yet, take your business directly to System 76, Star Labs, Framework, or other FOSS/H-friendly vendors, that give you choices:
https://trustworthy.technology/status.html
These are as good or better than the majority of PCs, though not yet Macs, and improving. But what you gain in freedom, privacy, and informed consent is priceless. Enjoy the golden handcuffs if feature X is more important to you than respect. It may be, who knows.
In the case we're talking about it's only about sending money to Microsoft one-time in the transaction, and the product itself comes with no handcuffs.
You pay with your data and self-respect, dealing with a micro-abusive partner. This continues as the purchase cycle repeats, including the tendency to get locked into proprietary software contracts.
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.
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 see any device as hardware + software. I think, it would be better to allow other companies to compete and offer a replacement for each part.
Apple can claim "we offer vertical integration" because we make both for each other, but you should be able to buy hardware or software independently of each other.
If MS sells they own laptops with bundled windows, they will have an incentive to make adjustments so other hardware products are less competitive. Long term, we'll end up with Apple/MS monopoly on devices where you don't have a vote on how your system works and what data it sends to whom.
This means that it should be possible to install any OS on readers / phones / laptops / consoles and vote with your own money against shovelware (hello, smart TVs).
Because they don't license it for and support it running on millions of different combinations of models, hardware, etc. MacOS can be clean only because it has such limited scope of what it has to handle compared to windows/linux
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.
Finding it's much easier to migrate to linux with an llm as a troubleshooting assistant.
Even used it to make a task bar applet adjacent to Media Controls, where I can rate the current plexamp song without having to open plexamp.
A big plus of linux is the easy ability to use workspaces and switch between them with a hover over the workspace taskbar applet and the mousewheel (and other options).
> Finding it's much easier to migrate to linux with an llm as a troubleshooting assistant.
Especially with NixOS. I would never allow an LLM to make core updates to my OS for fear of breaking it. Now LLMs manage all my packages and upgrades, and because it's all declarative, I can always revert anything that goes wrong.
A recent ubuntu update made my boot fail - the splash screen for disk decryption has a known bug in the latest update for my exact video card. Being able to get into terminal-only recovery mode and launch Codex CLI and ask it to diagnose the problem was incredibly nice. I don't think I'll ever deviate from Linux again since most of my issues with it were random bugs like this, but they're now easily solvable.
I run claude code with 'dangerously skip permissions' flag enabled, and just tell it what I want. I hardly even interact with the OS anymore. I literally just tell it "install X, fix problem Y".
Someone should develop, or vibecode I guess, a Linux tool that does exactly this. A support agent so I can just install it for my mom and she can vaguely write her issues and needs and the agent does it.
I still use chat copy/paste for this. Can't argue too much when the results work. The tried and tested alternative for niche Linux issues is browsing the internet and checking different options until something works anyway.
I do recommend checking methods against another provider. Occasionally Claude will suggest X, and Sol is like WTF are you insane? Clear often and update the prompt with your latest findings, because there are so many opportunities for the agent to find red herrings that they'll fixate on.
As with all LLM work, if you know some sysadmin, the process goes a lot smoother because you can say specifically "Write me a systemd unit file that does X" instead of a vague "I want to automate this, how do I do it" and not have a gut feel for which approaches are jank.
I switched my primary PC over in 1999, my secondary over in 2001, and haven't looked back since.
You're in a better place today than back then as finding software solutions to common problems is much easier now.
For other OS needs, just virtualize. I started off using VMware Workstation, after a decade (or so) transitioned to Virtualbox, and now today, virt-manager (qemu, kvm through libvirt).
Good that you decided to do the move. Often any existing problem on Linux has already been solved by someone; it may just take a while when you find a solution. In that case I also recommend to make local notes. I do so since +20 years. Some of those local notes helped me many years later.
The real culprit is Microsoft's licensing which gives PC manufacturers a "discount" when they install Windows on all their computers. As soon as they deliver machines without it they lose the discount on all the Windows machines they sell.
This should be challenged in court and prohibited by law. But so far, no computer manufacturer has dared to do so for fear of losing the ability to sell their computers with Windows pre-installed.
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.
Because the quoted price for their laptops always includes Windows, the option to configure and remove the Windows license is effectively a discount for alternative OS users. :)
Sometimes, it seems, Microsoft will actually OEM Windows at a loss. A year ago I bought some NUCs with Windows pre-installed that were less expensive that if they came with Ubuntu. Microsoft apparently felt is was important to try and hang onto that market. I bought the less expensive NUCs with Windows and then formatted them and installed Ubuntu, saving myself around $40 per machine.
I think the reason for the this is the additional software applications pre-installed on top of windows where the publishers of those applications are paying for the right to be “distributed” in this way. Think in terms of software that is pre-installed but requires a subscription for continued use like anti-virus software, productivity software, media editors and players, etc.
Ie: the Windows OEM license costs less than the total amount of money that the other software publishers are paying for distribution and if you reject windows, your are rejecting things that subsidize the price of the PC itself.
Just getting your money back doesn't make it work well with other operating systems.
Instead, buy hardware from vendors that ship hardware with the operating system you want to use preinstalled, and with support you can contact to get help if something breaks.
One of the reasons I like building my own PC is that when I build it from parts, I don't have to pay then windows tax when I'm just putting linux on it.
Although that doesn't work as well for laptops :( .
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.
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?
Its not like you enter in your payment information to buy the Windows license after you buy the computer. That's the thing. You inherently already bought the license when you bought the computer, it was just another item in the overall package like the RAM and the SSD and the battery and what not.
So even if on the first boot you just immediately booted into whatever other operating system, you still paid for Windows.
I believe they are referring to preinstalled Windows as an OS when you buy a PC. The PC price itself already includes the price of the Windows License. And the article advocates requesting refunds if you intend to install a different OS.
Is the money refunded related to the cost of the OS license? Why not just advocate that manufacturers and vendors don't pass the cost off to consumers?
> Consumers should have the right to decline pre-installed software
As a consumer I should also have the right to free ice cream and a pony ride.
Many of us have tried to start or run businesses small or large. Does it make any sense for a government to start telling us what software the business should use or not use?
Consumers already have the right to decline pre-installed software: don't buy the laptop. There, you've declined it.
I see your point, but this doesn't seem to be in good faith. There's a distinct difference between ice cream and pony rides (which would be, awesome, with a new laptop) - and a business practice which maintains a monopoly on consumer hardware.
I think it's reasonable for manufactures putting their own software on (I.e., Mac or Microsoft devices running what they want), but all other hardware manufactures only offering Windows just benefits Microsoft, and is clearly part of the MS strategy
I make the analogy to highlight that just because something is desirable to a consumer doesn't mean we should have laws to enforce it.
The theory and law around monopolies is something I know at only a surface level. Up until I read Thiel's Zero to One I would have told you monopolies are bad but his chapter comparing airlines to Google made me question this.
Are you suggesting that you never know if the computer you are buying has windows on it or not?
This is not the same thing at all. These computers all advertise that they come with Windows. It isn't like when you buy it, you have a 5% chance of it being infected with Windows.
If the Cyclospora lettuce was labeled as containing Cyclospora, and you could choose to buy that lettuce or some other lettuce, then yes, it wouldn't be a problem.
I wouldn't argue for no regulation. I don't see the regulatory problems though as similar. Isn't one health and the other... monopoly? Expensive laptops?
It sounds reasonable to have the opportunity to buy hardware without software you do not intend to use. Though, I do assume that from the POV of the company selling the software, it would be ideal for the customer to not have a choice. I guess companies also want free ice creams and pony rides.
Let's say you and I bump into each other in the town square and we each have some things we might be willing to give the other if we get the right thing in return. In that situation I'd think both sides have the right to offer what they like and both sides can choose freely whether to accept what is offered.
What is different about this town square and your relationship to say Dell?
That's easy: The town square bump situation involves having the right to offer what you like and choosing freely, and my relationship to, say, Dell, or Lenovo, or Framework, or Apple, is that I can have money, they can build hardware, I can spend money on their hardware, and I might even be able to buy hardware+software that I like with the money I have.
What I don't have is a factory/expertise/resources to build the hardware myself if Dell, Lenovo, or Apple decide to start offering things that you or I do not want. I was very careful to say as such: If you're selling the software, the ideal situation for you would be that the buyers have no other choice other than you. That's the "free pony ride" you think customers are wanting, but these companies are actually getting.
The world doesn't run on analogies and situations don't become equal because they look similar. Evidently you could argue about incentives to build software going away, or anything else, but I would like to reiterate that the ideal situation for me, as a customer, would be for me to have a _choice_ in whether I buy the software or not. Not having the choice, i.e., by being told to "just not buy hardware" is not the ideal situation for me as a customer.
And just as you are arguing for the ideal situation for the companies, I'm arguing for the ideal situation for the customer.
This is such a boomer coded 'deal with it' take. The manufacturer is going to charge you a premium for the software license. If you never intend to use that license, it's completely reasonable to think that we could live in a world where you could uncheck a box and avoid that altogether.
Unfortunately, in practice most PC vendors get paid to bundle a giant pile of bloatware/malware/adware on the system, and they eagerly accept those payments because PCs are a low-margin business. So if your refund actually represented the amount the vendor spent, you'd end up paying them more to have a system without Windows.
You are forgetting that we are free to change and invent new rules whenever we want. PC manufacturers can change this. Some already have, like Lenovo (sorta) and Framework. It does not need to be the way that it has been.
The last laptops I bought had no operating system pre-installed other than some DOS variant or something like that. I installed Linux on them. So, not that I have anything against the website mentioned, I think people who want to avoid Windows, already can do so. The bigger issue I see is that people are often not very computer-savvy, in particular the older generation; the younger generation often knows how to handle computers better, to some extent (yes, even smartphone-only folks). For the elderly, Linux is way too complicated. And it wasn't really simplified sufficiently.
I do wonder whether AI may change that. Now, I don't think so, and I hate AI, but have a look at Omarchy from DHH. Personally I would not use it for many reasons (including the fact that DHH goes on my nerves), but IF the underlying rationale is that people can use Linux in an extremely simplified manner, then this is a good thing.
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.
am I the only one that feels like this is kinda tacky on principles, but also how much is it really worth the time, and if you ever resell or VM windows on that same box you can use your baked in license, seems like a small amount of money that is baked into your laptop cost already and they purchase in bulk, I am not convinced the effort of making this campaign was even worth the squeeze and it def is going to be more expensive for vendors to support than it would be for them to increase the price of their products in response...
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.
They mostly use Firefox on the laptop, like 95% of the time - FB, YouTube, GDrive, some web games. I also got them uBlock installed. No issues so far. Firefox works really fast. Memory pressure is low, even when watching YT videos, probably 1.5-2GB at most. I though 6GB won't be enough and installed zram, but honestly - the OS never touches the swap, at least when I tested it. Will check the state again in a couple of months.
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.
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.
That’s a good one. Codecs are one of the few excusable reasons to me. It’s fair that we have ever-more strenuous codecs because obviously every new generation of them has better quality per byte.
What’s inexcusable is just that every application out there, web or Electron, the only two kinds that seem to exist anymore, is written with increasingly bloated stacks and layers of JavaScript. I’m pretty sure the system requirements needed for applications to run smoothly are scaling exactly in sync with the spec of the average software engineer’s (or PM’s) computer. For some reason, in 2012 something like Slack or Outlook or an IDE was exactly as performant on a PC with 8GB and 2 cores, as the current versions are today on a modern high-end machine with 32GB of RAM and 10 cores. Yet they do the same tasks. There haven’t been any big innovations in the calendar, or chat, or email - none that inherently require more hardware resources, at least.
1) Reduced telemetry and background services.
2) More efficient resource management.
Windows is super bloated when it comes to number of background task that transfer information to Microsoft and how much of the system resources their own applications need. Weather APP for example.
Windows telemetry can easily consume one CPU core after startup for 5 to 15 minutes depending on the age of the computer.
Windows updating system uses even more system resources than a Linux distro updating system. Linux is simple file copying-replace while Windows has to perform logical transactions because of how bad the bones of the OS are.
It can take _cleanmgr_ 15 minutes or more to clean up a system when selecting to remove old Windows update installers. Linux just has to mark the file as re-usable and move on. _cleanmgr_ does not even clean out all of the Temp files and requires manual interaction to do so.
Worst of all, Windows makes it a complete pain the ass to manage air gap system with updates. Linux just needs to create a HTTP server pointing to the packages on USB drive.
I slightly agree, but it seems like I have to install a restart-required update for my Macs at least every two weeks nowadays. Which not only requires that full reboot sequence, but also 10 minutes of downtime waiting for what I assume is a bunch of encryption work. So I would counter that I would like to see that optimized better. (Of course, I would like it even better if we could just branch to the alternate timeline where Apple wasn’t encrypting and signing the system volume to avoid any chance of us modifying it)
> suspend/resume
Hard agree. Frustrating that I’ve still never had a non-Mac yet that I can just shut the lid and know that it won’t be blowing fans, apparently running, in my freaking backpack. Or wake up randomly in the middle of the night disturbing my sleep.
Nor can I be confident that when I open it, I’ll see the login screen already ready to go. How is this so hard? I would understand with Linux or with a home-built PC. But shouldn’t Lenovo and HP be able to make sleep work correctly?
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.
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.
If I were to transition my 70yo mum from Windows to Linux, the first thing I'd do would be to add such a skin. Yes, there will be differences, but the value of re-injecting some familiarity with the fundamentals cannot be underestimated. She already hates anything post-XP and would probably be delighted to go back.
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 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.)
I absolutely agree that the interfaces up until 2005s and, in case of Mac, early 2010s or so were better in terms of usability, but somehow it’s hard to imagine coming back there from the modern UIs with all their shadows and transparencies and such.
There has to be a middle ground somewhere in this.
>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
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 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).
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Tbh I worked in customer service for a long time and almost always we would give a refund for whatever the customers asked except in rare cases.
And exactly like you said if the customer cares enough to reach out, just give them what they want. Best case they are super happy and recommend you and if you don’t comply they might go ballistic and do all kinds of stuff that will damage the business way beyond what the refund costs (very little)
It's been very funny to go through life discovering such shibboleths exist in so many random places and its like getting a powerup to even find out about them...
A few months ago I bought a scam CPU along with a working computer.
The CPU is almost identical in performance to the one they were advertising —it was certainly malicious— but do I deserve $200 for something I didn't even care about in the first place?
There an argument to be made for harming the criminals even if you deserve it but it just doesn't vibe with my type.
If it's identical in performance, in what way is it a scam?
It had a slightly narrower cache.
Share!
It took some court cases to get there...
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.
Thankfully, Linux phones are becoming more and more viable as a daily-driver. We just need more folks to start using them.
> We just need more folks to start using them.
I would if I could. Which non-Android Linux phone can I buy here in Brazil? Importing from outside Brazil doesn't count unless it has ANATEL certification, customs rejects any non-certified phone.
If not for online banking I probably wouldn't even have a smartphone, however none of my banks supports anything other than recent androids. I feel stuck
then look for alternatives to banking itself! that impulse will shape the world even more.
I wish it were that easy. But you get constantly flagged, questioned and banned from things if you don't play the traditional banking rules.
I am trying, that's why I know
You do not get banned from things for paying cash.
You cannot pay cash for MANY things I consider a requirement these days. Ex internet, health care, mobile access, ...
None of these in my country support crypto either. Well for mobile maybe.
Primarily, that would be cash.
pieces of paper is certainly better than bank database entries, but it's still fundamentally the same game: you need to work for something that they can print.
I just need a phone which can call triple zero in Australia, I all not yet aware of any.
Fair point, but we still need people (like Linux enthusiasts) in Australia to buy these phones and complain to the manufacturer to add support for any missing features needed for 000, and work with the carriers to whitelist the devices. If no one buys these devices in the first place and no one complains about it, Linux phone makers would have little incentive to resolve the issue.
Maybe the Aussie Linux users could get together and work together with Linux Australia[1] to act as an intermediary and work something out.
[1] https://linux.org.au/
I don't believe Linux Australia is the first port of call. Rather, conferences/meetups that are supported by Linux Australia would be the way to go. Basically, it needs to be very grassroots, and start with (capable) people who are genuinely interested in this and not distracted by other things that are a waste of attention. Any other strategy will likely be even more difficult and less likely to take fruition.
The crap part is a lot of niche phones got banned because you need to prove it can call triple zero not by default, so it'll be a real pain, and carriers don't really care.
What freedom do you need beyond replacing the OS, which is possible on all phones Google sells? If you want to replace the radio firmware, that isn't something that would be possible without that duopoly either.
The Pixel line is, from what I can see, a tiny part of the smart phone market share.
So, yes, I can buy a phone that I can mostly control (at the risk of losing access to some draconian apps). But most devices being sold don't allow consumer control.
consumer control begins by chosing what you give your money for.
Not having a constant remote root open for the mothership and whoever works there?
Doing crazy things like taking a backup of the phone which you paid full price for?
If you replace the OS, you don't have remote root open, and you can back up whatever you want.
We were fine without it, we can still be fine without it.
Nothing is stopping you from buying an mp3 player, a small point and shoot, and running Linux on a 12 in ultra portable.
> a small point and shoot,
Actually the Point and shoot market has largely dried up, even the 'fancier' point and shoots.
Apple did a very smart thing, using Sony BSI[0] and Stacked[1] Sensors in their phones.
As the 'Camera Snob' in the family my Brother recently asked me to help look for a small point and shoot for his wife for their child's events, and I was shocked at how few options there are compared to a decade ago (And how little most have improved since!)
To be clear, the 'ILC' (what many might think of when they think of when they say DSLR) market has continued to advance and the tech is better than ever, but the simple built-in lens point and shoot market has gotten very small outside of certain markets.
[0] - Back Side Illumination, basically a way to build the sensor that allows more light to hit it, but has some yield implications
[1] - Stacked sensors is again another sensor-build optimization, but it allows for faster readout of the full sensor with less rolling shutter, makes 'computational photography' feasible.
Lots of things are stopping me. Like needing a smartphone to read a menu at a restaurant, or replace a lost credit card.
Or passes to buses, trains, planes, concerts, sports arenas, and possibly soon government identification.
There was a recent story about some guy who had been buying season tickets for decades by paper ticket. The stadium shutdown the paper ticketing and left him without an option, except to purchase a smartphone.
Must be a Europe thing, as RealID pissed enough boomers off here in the States that I doubt anyone would push harder than that, and outside of very stupid ticket apps that occasionally won't let me print, I can't recall the last time a paper ticket and my drivers license didn't work. I also can just walk into a bank branch and raise a stink whenever I need something banking related, I guess all of this feels really contrived.
I think they're referring to LA Dodgers fan Errol Segal.
Also, plenty of businesses have very few physical offices.
> Like needing a smartphone to read a menu at a restaurant,
Every restaurant I’ve been to like this has a menu somewhere.
> or replace a lost credit card.
The phone numbers never stopped working. You just stopped calling
I called Capital One to replace a card this month (either there's no online flow or it wasn't available to me). The default flow to verify my identity before they'd replace the card was to send a notification to the android app. My android version is too old. The alternative flow (which took them 20 minutes to figure out) was to send a text message with a link to an online ID verification service.
Is it COMPLETELY impossible that you could receive that link on a dumb phone, send it to a PC with a webcam, and then take a selfie photo and an ID photo? No. Is it likely to be an incredible hassle? Dear lord, yes. You can't upload photos, so you'd have to finagle with a webcame to get a shot of your ID on a surface followed by a selfie of yourself. Is it possible that in other similar situations, you'll be required to use an android app instead of a website? Yes, I've had that happen.
I think you are grossly underestimating the degree to which smartphones have become absolutely mandatory for many tasks.
The alternative alternative flow is to go to their branch.
I don't believe Capital One has physical branches, which isn't uncommon for credit card issues that aren't also banks.
> Every restaurant I’ve been to like this has a menu somewhere.
And the best restaurants have staff and chefs that can deliver things that aren't even on a standard menu...
Actually, this reminds me of a time when I saw a person with communication difficulties order at a McDonald's counter. Without missing a beat, the staff member pulled out a large pictorial menu from beneath their counter for the person with a disability to point to. It seemed like a totally normal occurrence to them, but a very novel one to me as the next person in line.
> The phone numbers never stopped working. You just stopped calling
The bank managed to not fix the problem the last 4 times my grandmother called them. Every single problem required an appointment to fix (I suspect they're not even allowed to do anything with any account over phone given how many times this has happened).
Yes, her bank is bad and I've told her to switch. But I wouldn't expect any other bank to actually have good customer service.
No offense but it sounds like your grandmother has a skill issue.
Why should the customer of a bank need any skills? Surely the bank is the one that should have the skills.
We can't all be good at everything.
Ask the restaurant staff for a menu. If they don't have one, go to a different restaurant.
On MP3 players: I specifically got bone conducting headphones with on board storage so I could listen to music without carrying another device with me. Look for ones that are targeted towards swimming, they are the ones that tend to have on board storage.
On small point and shoots, I have a Sony ZV-1. It's marketed as a video camera, but I mostly use it for photography. It's great quality, and pocketable.
On compute, I don't really have a phone at all. I carry a Daylight Computer DC-1. Which as a device I recommend, but unfortunately the company backs anti-vax efforts which I found out about recently :\
Why would I want 3 or more devices, when I want one device capable of it all and under my control?
Congratulations on missing the point entirely.
You don’t NEED a smartphone for daily life. It sure is convenient though!
If your daily life includes interacting with a bank then in many cases you absolutely do need a smartphone many banks no longer have websites that can be accessed with a web browser.
Change bank
And who are you to tell, me what I need?
You went from want to need. Maybe you should self inspect about want versus need.
Erm, I wrote "want" - you wrote "need" in the comment to reply. You seem to have it backwards.
And thank's for the advice, but I know how to live with little to survive and I know what I need to thrive and that ain't the same thing.
Go and visit some places in the world were people struggle for the basic necessities of life and God himself will tell you.
Been there. And I don't feel the need to be in that situation, but life is more about survival.
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And how would I make calls with it?
They still make dumb phones. And you can get a voip client on Linux.
Many so called dumb phones are just Android phones with buttons, real dumb low powered devices are being phased out because you don't get support for VoLTE Emergency
My Nokia 105 has 4G (as well as 3G and 2G) and is definitely not a smartphone and absolutely not an Android. It runs S30+.
What do you mean by:
> support for VoLTE Emergency
If it can't call 911 you're not allowed to sell it as a phone. Phone calls use VoLTE which is newish technology. Therefore it's illegal to sell older technology as a phone.
Allowed or not, if you bought your phone before the regulations were in place you'd still have no connection on some models, even 4G phones
> https://www.whistleout.com.au/MobilePhones/Guides/Check-if-p... "But it's not just 3G phones that won't work on Australian mobile networks; certain 4G phones won't work either if they don't support Voice over Long-Term Evolution (VoLTE) Emergency Calling."
Why would I want to call 911? The number here is 999, or 110, 113, 113 in the rest of Europe. And of course I can call it.
Right, and if your phone can't support whatever the network uses for it, you're not allowed to sell it as a phone.
Even fake toy phones for kids need stickers that say there's no emergency service.
For voip, I recommend jmp.chat and cheogram. I've been using it for years now.
That's what de-facto monopolies do.
What is more surprising is that competitors do not arise. Democracies in general have totally messed this up. The USA should be fined for exerting a monopoly onto other countries. And then fined for penalising US customers with that monopoly at home.
Other countries are free to find a way to incentivize building home-grown equivalents and prioritizing that software or even applying tarrifs to foreign software.
"the US"? fined by whom?
By the king of England of course.
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> 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.
I actually expected those to pay for being pre-installed, offsetting or possibly even exceeding the cost of the Windows license.
There's no way the typically included 30-day trial of an antivirus or Office costs 50€. It must've been a full yearly subscription of one or the other, that managed to sneak in right before checkout without being de-selected.
Apart from the OS I got reimbursed for 4 or 5 additional items between 6 to 15€ each as far as I can remember, I don't have the details as she only told me on the phone and have no record of it. The original invoice had the following list (although it seemed different from the itemized price list that customer service had access to):
I sure as hell did not order extra antivirus or other kind of software but I guess it's possible there was some "Office and 15-month antivirus included" marketing offer that turned out to to neither be free nor optional...While your mouse is over the "place order" button, after the left mouse button has moved through the first 0.2mm of its 1mm travel, but before the click is registered, the checkbox next to "1 year subscription to McAfee Anti-Virus" is automatically enabled, to better serve our customers.
I also heard the same thing, hence my surprise, but I guess I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a company simultaneously being paid for installing bloatware and also charging the customer for it...
> I had no idea I was in fact charged for the bloatware
It’s complicated. Those licenses have a dollar amount for accounting purposes.
Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich. Those taxes don't avoid themselves.
So your personal computer was not tied to a specific OS and you were easily about to get a refund for the license cost of the OS that shipped in box. So what’s the issue? Do you want hardware to ship without any software?
Ideally. Normaly if you build a computer, there will not be any OS on a random SSD you buy for it. And it's fine. Do I have to build my own laptop to get this nice experience on a laptop?
> Normaly if you build a computer, there will not be any OS on a random SSD you buy for it.
That's why so many people go with pre-built and don't even care about wiping and reinstalling the OS to get rid of the bloat. They want a fully functioning product from the moment they power it on so having the OS is a big deal.
It's OK as an option, even as a default, Just give me a dropdown with "blank" as an option too.
Even without Microsoft's interference, it would still complicate logistics. Two OS options means double the number of SKUs. Some manufacturers offer this option but I wouldn't hold my breath that retailers want to bother.
Is it still different SKUs if it's easily convertible from one to the other?
Yes, Amazon and other retailers will have one laptop with OS, one laptop without. They need to track two different SKUs even if the conversion is easy. When upgradeable, SSD or RAM are also easily "convertible" but the SKU still needs to uniquely identify that "thing" that you have in stock or in the manufacturing pipeline.
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I would rather get full refound for laptop, if I disagree with the license. Windows is unseparatable from hardware after all...
Use laptop for a few months, than finally boot windows install...
The hardware is separable from the windows though.
Not always, Microsoft lingers like a fart in an elevator on some laptops. =3
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/...
Some had to do a manual firmware/BIOS update. ymmv =3
Yes, always. The link you pasted doesn't prove otherwise. It just shows a luck of understanding UEFI
Some vendor firmware blocks external platform key enrollments. Contains 100% farts.
Have a great day =3
That might be true. And has nothing to do with your previous ridiculous claim. Your comment is further proof you lack even basic understanding of UEFI. But I sense the feeling that logic won't change your emotional position on the matter, so I'm not going to bother you further.
Someone probably buried your post for Sealioning, but in general even trying to install a clean windows 11 pro OS over a windows 11 Home embedded firmware license/hardware-signature on a gaming laptop is too complex for many users.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
Perhaps getting outside for a nice walk could lower stress levels a bit. =3
In that case, I suggest (not having tried it) that updating the OS and then resetting it might work better? Does Windows still have the reset option it had in win8?
The issue is the update license is different than full install licenses, and the red sticker oem licenses people scam are hardware specific.
You usually must pay for windows twice (or more if you don't know) to be Pro license compliant for commercial use.
Setting a machine up for multi-boot Linux/BSD is not always a simple process with every BIOS firmware, and configuring Windows to stop automatic encryption of NTFS volumes is nontrivial. Even with an offline install for games, if the OneDrive account is ever activated... files are upped to Microsoft cloud anyway.
Running an offline win11 account with a recent "rclone gui" NFS mounter for cloud APIs is a better option:
https://github.com/rclone/rclone
winget install Rclone.Rclone
Thankfully, disarming Win11 TPM/Drive-boobytrap/BS-encryption/Spam is easy with Rufus, O&O ShutUp10, and Copilot removal (note undocumented AI API areas suggested RAT/snitch-ware... the final straw with Microsoft BS around here...)
https://github.com/pbatard/rufus
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
https://github.com/zoicware/RemoveWindowsAI
Yes it still supports DRM Steam games, and Win11 x4 gen4 SSDs are now about 17% faster i/o on my rig.
You know what I like about Apple OS, is you just flip around 8 options and it goes quiet.
Best of luck, ymmv =3
This makes almost no sense, so you would return the whole laptop due to Windows being on the machine once before ?
> Windows is unseparatable from hardware after all...
What are you talking about ? The TPM ? Not windows', they enforce once being there for W11 but it's not some trojan M$ code ?
Why bother making a throwaway account only to post a comment that is obviously and blatantly wrong?
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham's_Law
I also raised an eyebrow at "the vast majority of laptops are only sold with a specific proprietary operating system: Microsoft Windows", but after looking at some estimates it seems legit. Probably only about 1 in 10 laptops is a Mac. Software developers really just live in a different world than normal people.
It got me thinking though: what is a laptop? People probably count Chromebooks, and that seems fair. Is a SteamDeck a laptop? Is an iPad with a keyboard case a laptop? Is a Microsoft Surface Pro a laptop when it has its keyboard attached?
A laptop is whatever uses a rigid clamshell form factor with a screen that folds down over the keyboard. A screen with a flippy floppy detachable keyboard is not that, so:
- A chrome book is a laptop, it uses the laptop form factor.
- A Steamdeck is not a laptop. It does not use the laptop form factor.
- An iPad is not a laptop. It does not use the laptop form factor out of the box, it needs peripherals to even pretend to be one.
- A surface Pro is also not a laptop, but the Surface Laptop is. Just "having a flippy floppy magnetic keyboard pre-bundled with it" doesn't make a tablet a laptop. Having a rigid clamshell design makes it a laptop.
And yes, that makes the Asus Zenbook a laptop, because it is. It just has the circuitry in the screen instead of the base. Hell, Asus literally calls them laptops themselves.
I can't think of any software engineers I personally know who use Mac. In my industry, pretty much anyone who uses Mac is in a managerial position.
Every engineer at my job uses a mac. Same for my friends job.
In fact, the only people who use windows are finance people, HR, etc
I forgot this thread was about Windows, lol. Most of the software engineers I know use GNU/Linux.
all of our engineering teams use macs except one dude who carries his early 2000s windows4life gamer energy with him wherever he goes. as it turns out if you aren't specifically like doing cuda or dx stuff having unix and being able to compile quickly, emulate or translate every deployment target architecture, great ppw ... lends a lot of credit towards many domains of software engineering. it feels like it collapsed multiple devices into one. i just spin up a windows environment if i need to support some janky legacy windows only thing.
... I guess I know a couple of software engineers that use Windows.
In my experience as the head of data science in a corporation, everybody uses Windows on their local machines and Linux remotely.
Software devs absolutely live in their own little world. Regular people don’t even know what an OS is. All the details of computing have become so abstracted away from the user that they’re completely unaware.
> what is a laptop?
There's actually a very simple answer to that! A laptop is a mobile device with the set of functionalities that macOS has, but iPadOS hasn't :)
I wish this was ironic (I'd love to use the iPad Pro as laptop), but it isn't.
So a Surface Pro is a laptop then. Does a SteamDeck become a laptop if you install Windows on it?
> So a Surface Pro is a laptop then
That's exactly the situation with the iPad Pro, with the exception that Microsoft didn't castrate it. I've had one and used it for professional development; it's not very ergonomic when used on your lap (but still usable), so it's not to everyone's liking. Still, I'd use a modern one if it were 100% Linux-compatible, and wouldn't miss anything.
> Does a SteamDeck become a laptop if you install Windows on it?
Whether a laptop requires a hinge to be defined as such can b matter of personal preference. For me (and, again, for Apple), it's not a requirement. 7 inches is a dealbreaker for me, although I think Stallman used a 7-inch laptop.
A portable IBM PC is a laptop (lawful good).
An iPhone with a Bluetooth keyboard is a laptop (chaotic evil)
Anything resting across my legs while sitting is a laptop (true neutral)
Your girlfriend is a laptop.
Is the Commodore SX-64 a laptop?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_SX-64
Try finding a PC manufacturer that lets you choose Linux instead of Windows when customizing your PC. I remember one or two companies offering it, and even giving a discount for it (~$100?), but the rest simply default to Windows.
Others let you choose Linux, but you have to pay to remove Windows. They can't install their bloatware (or are unwilling to, anyways), so you have to pay the unsubsidized price.
> Software developers really just live in a different world than normal people.
They actually don't, which is why the vast majority of software developers would never "raise an eyebrow" to the very well known obviously true statement that the vast majority of laptops are only sold with Microsoft Windows, regardless of what they themselves or their coworkers use.
Clearly a computer is a laptop if you can use it comfortably while it’s sitting on your laps.
Or as Apple once (in)famously asked, "what's a computer?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S5BLs51yDQ
> It got me thinking though: what is a laptop?
A cat.
bro, ethernet and cellular data is called WiFi now
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.
And then people go to Best Buy and see there's a model on the shelf that looks to be the exact same but its $60 cheaper, so they buy that and then realize they have no idea what to do with it so I guess this brand of laptop just sucks, Macs don't have that problem I guess I'll just buy those instead.
Apple should also be forced to allow the user freedom to choose at least one other OS. But maybe thats too much to ask. I think it's not too much too ask, but I am probably an outlier. Dont start about Asahi please. I know it exists.
Okay we force Apple to give the consumer freedom to choose at least one other OS. But none other exists, so what should Apple do? Create a second operating system themselves to give the illusion of choice? Be forced to bankroll an independent team such as Asahi (which you don't seem to consider valid)?
It seems to me that you are asking too much.
Publish enough docs to let someone write a full OS?
It should stop refusing to boot things that aren't osx
What's wrong with Asahi linux?
Well, it doesn't work at all with the Macbook on my shelf from 2024. Doesn't install, doesn't boot. I'd say that's pretty important for an OS.
Ah. Yeah I don't know how they can even charge money for it then.
Well, you asked what's wrong with it, and being entirely unusable on a lot of the target hardware its trying to address sure seems like a problem. I didn't realize I needed to give them money to properly speak true statements.
I don't blame them, it's not like Apple makes it easy for them. They're definitely working hard on the project and I wish them luck. But one can't act like it's actually a viable OS to generally run on M series hardware. It kind of works on a select few models.
I have bought many computers that have Windows installed, they have all been trivial to replace with Linux installs. On almost all of them, I never even booted into windows once.
Was it wasted money going to Microsoft? I don't know, I bought the computers because the price point worked for me. I have also built a lot of computers myself, but most of the time my home built machines end up costing more than the pre-built one that has windows installed (although my parts are probably nicer, but maybe not always).
This is like a ton of things you buy. Sometimes they include parts you don't want, but if the price is good, it doesn't matter that you discard part of it.
The payment is the real problem here. It's like if every meal you bought included a $1 fee to McDonald's even though they had nothing to do with it. That would be very evil anti-competitive stuff, right? Or if the fee is for a McDonald's promotional poster they put in the box and you throw away, same thing.
I’d imagine the choice would be
Windows (+$120)
Linux ($0)
DIY ($0)
Linux wouldn't be zero. There's still a cost involved in installing the OS, even if it's miniscule and automatable. You can bet your life that laptop manufacturers are going to charge you for it.
And properly supporting it as well. Look at all the major brands supporting Linux on their computers, several even go so far as maintaining their own distros.
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> This is not a reasonable expectation.
I may be of a different age, but in my time it was common to buy computers without any OS pre-installed. It was on you to install one (from CD, floppy, whatever).
Of course, vendors selling PCs often also sold OS's...
Expectations change over time.
But I also believe your recollection is erroneous or must differ by region because I was there as early as the 80s and computers sold without an operating system weren't common. If you were buying a PC clone in the 90s you could buy it without the Windows license, of course, but the default was to include it.
Even before PCs, computers typically shipped with BASIC, which was their operating system of sort. Macs, Amigas, they all shipped with an OS as well.
> Even before PCs, computers typically shipped with BASIC, which was their operating system of sort.
Sure. In the 80's, all the IBM PC compatibles I dealt with shipped with BASIC in their ROM. But I don't think they charged a licensing fee for it.
Maybe not, but as I understand it, languages were one of Gates' key bargaining chips in negotiating the terms of the MS/PC-DOS deal that put Microsoft in a position to start licensing to OEM's on a per-CPU basis in the first place.
I'm pretty sure the BASIC that launched from my ROM was not from Microsoft...
It was if it was an IBM machine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_BASIC
Yes, but most people bought IBM Compatibles, not IBM. I don't think I know anyone who bought an actual IBM PC.
Cassette BASIC was exclusive to early IBM PCs, XTs and PC Jrs. PCs like Compaq's, with their very, very compatible BIOS, didn't have BASIC in ROM.
I had an XT. Not IBM. It had BASIC ROM. Everyone I know who had an XT (8088 or 8086) had BASIC in the ROM. None was IBM and all were different companies.
I don't think Compaq even made XTs, did they?
Actually (and I'm being pedantic here, I admit), only IBM made an XT, the others were all XT-clones or compatibles. And you could get a compatible ROM that contained BASIC. I also owned a non-IBM XT clone, which did not have BASIC in ROM.
This is still the case. You can absolutely buy computers without an OS, but most people don't want that so they aren't quite as easy to find.
Here is an HP without an OS: https://www.newegg.com/p/1VK-001E-4UPC7
If you want something that most other people don't want, it is going to be a little harder to find. That isn't a conspiracy, that is just life.
Yes, it may take some work these days. I was addressing the claim that it's "not a reasonable expectation" with a pretty poor rationale provided. The rationale applied equally well in the 80's and 90's, and no one then said "It's unreasonable to sell without an OS."
Sorry but this isn't the 70s. Even businesses expect devices to somewhat work out of the box so it's completely unreasonable to everyone except people who buy things like Raspberry PI, which are a tiny minority.
I'm talking about the 90's.
I'm sure they did sell computers with Windows pre-installed in the 90's. But almost every place also sold computers without any OS. It was not at all unusual.
The computing world wasn't just in the US, you know. Microsoft didn't have a deal with all PC manufacturers in the world.
Oh I am interested in buying a piece of hardware, they thought it would be convenient for customers to pre-install software I don’t want, and make money with it (the real convenience), and if I am to demand that I pay/ask only for the hardware, my expectation is unreasonable.
How convenient!
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 hear what you're saying, but there are issues when you continue the line of thought one step.
Imposing Windows implies requiring agreements to unknown eula's at the time of purchase. Consider Windows is there in the first place because of anticompetitive practices. Stuff like this is unreasonable too. I think moreso. I guess it comes down to if you think consumers or big tech is more deserving of protection.
this has only been somewhat possoble for laptops within the last decade even then you're limited to a narrower selection of models.
Also these models are usually expensive. Cheap/low-end models don't have this option ever. Depending on the financial situation, the "just buy the alternative" may not be possible. Some people here need to touch grass, this campaign is probably not particularly concerned with their configured 2k+ dev machines.
> Seems like it makes a lot more sense to buy a computer without Windows preinstalled.
For the vase majority of users, it only makes sense to buy hardware with a preinstalled OS.
Is this complexity intrinsic, accidental or even intentional? Bundling is a powerful move to defend monopolies.
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?
Sure and whoever sells the monitor can sell it in a bundle like that, people will just stop buying their monitor and buy the competition's instead
You can do that with software, too. It just turns out that there's more people who want to bundle their software
In fact, this is what happens in the case of laptop displays
except when you for example buy a spare part, which I know some people hate having the ability to do, but some of us actually appreciate
You are comparing apples and oranges.
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I was part of an event called "Windows Refund Day" in 1999 (I think) to draw attention to this issue. We had a march to a Microsoft office to ask for refunds (unsuccessfully). It was fun, but it's 27 years later and it's still a problem.
Edit: it's covered on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Refund_Day
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.
Now you tell me...
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!
Better option is to wipe the drive and install Linux. The Windows OEM license is tied to the hardware, so you can always reinstall Windows Home from scratch later if you end up reselling it.
That said, calling Windows flaky for shipping disk encryption on a laptop seems odd to me. On a device that’s easy to steal, that’s a feature you want. You can turn the cut-down BitLocker that Home gets back on in the security settings: search “Device Encryption” in the Start menu and you should land on it.
You are confused about your dates. 2027 is and has always been the year of Linux on the Desktop, so hold tight.
…always has been
Annual Festivities :-) Pole & everything
I honestly would assume that’s a pretty honest price for an OEM license paid by a company as big as Asus, they definitely don’t pay retail!
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)
Thank you.
Cheaper → more licenses and also more post-license profit, yes, agreed, hence my (admittedly oblique) wellness comment, but this is also true of direct to consumer prices, and my question is specifically about any price difference between the two.
PC makers intermediating other MS objectives makes sense.
Re market access, does Asus actually increase the size of the Windows market, or sell to people who’d otherwise buy Windows another way? I think you’re saying yes, a big PC maker plays a part in getting more people to buy Windows more often, and that’s the biggest thing I was missing.
That’s a narrow view to suggest it’s just Microsoft’s Copilot that’s pushing NPU’s on PCs. You need some NPU or GPU for system requirements not just for Copilot but for any local models including Gemini Nano in Chrome, open models, models running on Linux without Windows at all. Intel and AMD are both making chips with NPU’s on the die just like they have made them with integrated GPUs.
AI isn’t going away any more than graphics acceleration is. You can deliberately buy a low-power board or notebook that doesn’t have those capabilities if you want. It will save you money too.
What? I think you're latching onto something meant as a general example, as something specific. Microsoft has many goals they'd like to push on their OEMs, I'm sure. You're having a different conversation.
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.
Retail licenses are transferrable, OEM/OEI licenses aren't and are tied to that specific hardware.
Win 11 Pro OEI, $149
https://www.microcenter.com/product/643566/microsoft-windows...
Win 11 Pro Retail/FPP, $199
https://www.microcenter.com/product/669901/microsoft-windows...
I'm certain OEMs are getting volume discounts, and Microcenter is adding their own margin as well.
That’s not how OEM pricing works. Depending on the retail price and volume Microsoft will lower license cost close to $0. No large manufacturer is paying $140 to license Windows for a notebook selling $200. That’s the full retail price for a consumer building their own PC. That said usable Windows notebooks are usually a bit more than that these days. And just the RAM alone to run usable Windows 11 is pushing $70 now.
That is exactly the point of the comment you're responding to. "Why do you assume that [OEMs pay much less than retail]?" Well, $200 Windows laptops exist, and $140 of that going to a Windows license is not a credible idea.
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.
Better yet, take your business directly to System 76, Star Labs, Framework, or other FOSS/H-friendly vendors, that give you choices: https://trustworthy.technology/status.html
... If the product is as good. Sadly if you buy a worse product for ideological reasons, it's still a sacrifice.
These are as good or better than the majority of PCs, though not yet Macs, and improving. But what you gain in freedom, privacy, and informed consent is priceless. Enjoy the golden handcuffs if feature X is more important to you than respect. It may be, who knows.
In the case we're talking about it's only about sending money to Microsoft one-time in the transaction, and the product itself comes with no handcuffs.
You pay with your data and self-respect, dealing with a micro-abusive partner. This continues as the purchase cycle repeats, including the tendency to get locked into proprietary software contracts.
You don't, because you install Linux on it immediately.
That hasn’t been enough in almost twenty years. Most things are in the cloud now. Try running OpenSnitch for a demonstration.
There have been numerous examples of malware and spyware in proprietary firmware.
Best to clean house completely, starting with hardware you can trust. And everyone’s purchases compound due to investment.
Looks like this is Italy-only.
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.
I did the same in germany for Diablo 3 around 2014. Boxed game, ToS not outside = not part of the purchase contract.
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.
It's unfair that apple gets an easy pass on this, as well as any mobile device.
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 see any device as hardware + software. I think, it would be better to allow other companies to compete and offer a replacement for each part.
Apple can claim "we offer vertical integration" because we make both for each other, but you should be able to buy hardware or software independently of each other.
If MS sells they own laptops with bundled windows, they will have an incentive to make adjustments so other hardware products are less competitive. Long term, we'll end up with Apple/MS monopoly on devices where you don't have a vote on how your system works and what data it sends to whom.
This means that it should be possible to install any OS on readers / phones / laptops / consoles and vote with your own money against shovelware (hello, smart TVs).
Apple doesn't pay to ship macOS on its devices.
Because they don't license it for and support it running on millions of different combinations of models, hardware, etc. MacOS can be clean only because it has such limited scope of what it has to handle compared to windows/linux
Nobody complaints that MS laptops ship with Windows - this is about hardware companies partnering with MS.
MacOS is free, what refund would you expect?
I reckon Apple buyers are more interested in the OS than in the hardware, in general.
I buy Apple products because the holistic product is the best. I say this begrudgingly, because I do not like MacOS from the user interface side.
If I could run linux on Apple hardware and get the same power-sipping performance, that's what I'd be doing.
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.
Finding it's much easier to migrate to linux with an llm as a troubleshooting assistant.
Even used it to make a task bar applet adjacent to Media Controls, where I can rate the current plexamp song without having to open plexamp.
A big plus of linux is the easy ability to use workspaces and switch between them with a hover over the workspace taskbar applet and the mousewheel (and other options).
> Finding it's much easier to migrate to linux with an llm as a troubleshooting assistant.
Especially with NixOS. I would never allow an LLM to make core updates to my OS for fear of breaking it. Now LLMs manage all my packages and upgrades, and because it's all declarative, I can always revert anything that goes wrong.
Do you have any code you can share with us on how you do this? Very interested! Related to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49482425
A recent ubuntu update made my boot fail - the splash screen for disk decryption has a known bug in the latest update for my exact video card. Being able to get into terminal-only recovery mode and launch Codex CLI and ask it to diagnose the problem was incredibly nice. I don't think I'll ever deviate from Linux again since most of my issues with it were random bugs like this, but they're now easily solvable.
I agree, using LLMs makes all the linux issues very easy to troubleshoot. However, Im not sure it’s ready for the masses just yet.
I run claude code with 'dangerously skip permissions' flag enabled, and just tell it what I want. I hardly even interact with the OS anymore. I literally just tell it "install X, fix problem Y".
Someone should develop, or vibecode I guess, a Linux tool that does exactly this. A support agent so I can just install it for my mom and she can vaguely write her issues and needs and the agent does it.
I still use chat copy/paste for this. Can't argue too much when the results work. The tried and tested alternative for niche Linux issues is browsing the internet and checking different options until something works anyway.
I do recommend checking methods against another provider. Occasionally Claude will suggest X, and Sol is like WTF are you insane? Clear often and update the prompt with your latest findings, because there are so many opportunities for the agent to find red herrings that they'll fixate on.
As with all LLM work, if you know some sysadmin, the process goes a lot smoother because you can say specifically "Write me a systemd unit file that does X" instead of a vague "I want to automate this, how do I do it" and not have a gut feel for which approaches are jank.
Yeah this is an actually good use of AI in an OS.
"more than anything it was the incessant push to associate my OS account with an online Microsoft account"
Absolutely. Obnoxious and unacceptable. Then there's the fact that Windows has regressed into a clinic on UI incompetence and defective design.
I put Mint on my 2014 27" Intel iMac and it's slick.
I switched my primary PC over in 1999, my secondary over in 2001, and haven't looked back since.
You're in a better place today than back then as finding software solutions to common problems is much easier now.
For other OS needs, just virtualize. I started off using VMware Workstation, after a decade (or so) transitioned to Virtualbox, and now today, virt-manager (qemu, kvm through libvirt).
It was so brutal in 2006 that it took me nearly 20 years to shrug it off and try again.
I’m not proud of this, but it’s the truth.
Its been only 20 years since 2006 maybe you meant 19?
Typo… but it felt like nearly 29.
I remember trying again with Ibex and nearly rage quitting X11 config. Glad all that BS has been worked out.
Good that you decided to do the move. Often any existing problem on Linux has already been solved by someone; it may just take a while when you find a solution. In that case I also recommend to make local notes. I do so since +20 years. Some of those local notes helped me many years later.
It was good back then as long as your hardware wasn't too new.
The real culprit is Microsoft's licensing which gives PC manufacturers a "discount" when they install Windows on all their computers. As soon as they deliver machines without it they lose the discount on all the Windows machines they sell.
This should be challenged in court and prohibited by law. But so far, no computer manufacturer has dared to do so for fear of losing the ability to sell their computers with Windows pre-installed.
Do you have a source for this practice? I couldn’t find any evidence of it with a search.
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.
Which is why Dell doesn't have a process. You can just buy a Dell machine without Windows in the first place
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...
Dell probably gets money from other companies for the additional bloatware software installed on Windows system.
The same issue applies to any custom config, Windows or Ubuntu. I assume it's because a few standard specs benefit from economies of scale.
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.
My issue with DELL is that they support the Genocide of Gaza and profit from the killing of innocent children.
That's not true for all of Dell, I just tried their online store in other countries and it is bundling Windows licenses there.
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...
Especially if you buy a Ubuntu laptop ;)
You can but the price is the same.
That's true, I called them and their explanation was that the hardware and software bundle is sold as a package deal.
I ended up not buying their computer.
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.
Lenovo, ASUS and Acer only. Dell takes orders without Windows.
Lenovo also takes orders without Windows. Only for "configurable" skews through the website though.
*SKUs
That's why I like Lenovo, you can just buy version without OS.
Because the quoted price for their laptops always includes Windows, the option to configure and remove the Windows license is effectively a discount for alternative OS users. :)
Sometimes, it seems, Microsoft will actually OEM Windows at a loss. A year ago I bought some NUCs with Windows pre-installed that were less expensive that if they came with Ubuntu. Microsoft apparently felt is was important to try and hang onto that market. I bought the less expensive NUCs with Windows and then formatted them and installed Ubuntu, saving myself around $40 per machine.
I think the reason for the this is the additional software applications pre-installed on top of windows where the publishers of those applications are paying for the right to be “distributed” in this way. Think in terms of software that is pre-installed but requires a subscription for continued use like anti-virus software, productivity software, media editors and players, etc.
Ie: the Windows OEM license costs less than the total amount of money that the other software publishers are paying for distribution and if you reject windows, your are rejecting things that subsidize the price of the PC itself.
"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 to make sales when generally no one wants to buy what you are selling, e.g., a proprietary software license
Tie the product to another product that generally everyone wants to buy, e.g., personal computers
Preinstall the proprietary software on the computer
Make it difficult to replace the software (OS) with an alternative, e.g., a UNIX-like OS
This worked for Microsoft
If the consumer buys a laptop and overwrites (erases) Windows with a freely available, open source OS, then why should she pay for a Windows license
Just getting your money back doesn't make it work well with other operating systems.
Instead, buy hardware from vendors that ship hardware with the operating system you want to use preinstalled, and with support you can contact to get help if something breaks.
One of the reasons I like building my own PC is that when I build it from parts, I don't have to pay then windows tax when I'm just putting linux on it.
Although that doesn't work as well for laptops :( .
> consumers can refuse to install Windows and receive a refund
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.
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.
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?
When you buy the computer, the price of a Windows licence is included in the sticker price. Even if you never boot Windows you've already paid for it.
Ahh of course, yeh that makes sense
Its not like you enter in your payment information to buy the Windows license after you buy the computer. That's the thing. You inherently already bought the license when you bought the computer, it was just another item in the overall package like the RAM and the SSD and the battery and what not.
So even if on the first boot you just immediately booted into whatever other operating system, you still paid for Windows.
I believe they are referring to preinstalled Windows as an OS when you buy a PC. The PC price itself already includes the price of the Windows License. And the article advocates requesting refunds if you intend to install a different OS.
Is the money refunded related to the cost of the OS license? Why not just advocate that manufacturers and vendors don't pass the cost off to consumers?
> Consumers should have the right to decline pre-installed software
As a consumer I should also have the right to free ice cream and a pony ride.
Many of us have tried to start or run businesses small or large. Does it make any sense for a government to start telling us what software the business should use or not use?
Consumers already have the right to decline pre-installed software: don't buy the laptop. There, you've declined it.
I see your point, but this doesn't seem to be in good faith. There's a distinct difference between ice cream and pony rides (which would be, awesome, with a new laptop) - and a business practice which maintains a monopoly on consumer hardware.
I think it's reasonable for manufactures putting their own software on (I.e., Mac or Microsoft devices running what they want), but all other hardware manufactures only offering Windows just benefits Microsoft, and is clearly part of the MS strategy
> There's a distinct difference
What's the importance difference?
I make the analogy to highlight that just because something is desirable to a consumer doesn't mean we should have laws to enforce it.
The theory and law around monopolies is something I know at only a surface level. Up until I read Thiel's Zero to One I would have told you monopolies are bad but his chapter comparing airlines to Google made me question this.
If you don't like Cyclospora , don't buy lettuce infected with it. Similar regulatory problems, at least with the lettuce the diarrhea is temporary.
Are you suggesting that you never know if the computer you are buying has windows on it or not?
This is not the same thing at all. These computers all advertise that they come with Windows. It isn't like when you buy it, you have a 5% chance of it being infected with Windows.
If the Cyclospora lettuce was labeled as containing Cyclospora, and you could choose to buy that lettuce or some other lettuce, then yes, it wouldn't be a problem.
I wouldn't argue for no regulation. I don't see the regulatory problems though as similar. Isn't one health and the other... monopoly? Expensive laptops?
If Cyclospora is listed on the label then sure.
I don't use the builtin speaker on my laptop -- can I get refund on that too?
You can't seriously think that's comparable to the OS.
It sounds reasonable to have the opportunity to buy hardware without software you do not intend to use. Though, I do assume that from the POV of the company selling the software, it would be ideal for the customer to not have a choice. I guess companies also want free ice creams and pony rides.
> ideal for the customer to not have a choice
Let's say you and I bump into each other in the town square and we each have some things we might be willing to give the other if we get the right thing in return. In that situation I'd think both sides have the right to offer what they like and both sides can choose freely whether to accept what is offered.
What is different about this town square and your relationship to say Dell?
That's easy: The town square bump situation involves having the right to offer what you like and choosing freely, and my relationship to, say, Dell, or Lenovo, or Framework, or Apple, is that I can have money, they can build hardware, I can spend money on their hardware, and I might even be able to buy hardware+software that I like with the money I have.
What I don't have is a factory/expertise/resources to build the hardware myself if Dell, Lenovo, or Apple decide to start offering things that you or I do not want. I was very careful to say as such: If you're selling the software, the ideal situation for you would be that the buyers have no other choice other than you. That's the "free pony ride" you think customers are wanting, but these companies are actually getting.
The world doesn't run on analogies and situations don't become equal because they look similar. Evidently you could argue about incentives to build software going away, or anything else, but I would like to reiterate that the ideal situation for me, as a customer, would be for me to have a _choice_ in whether I buy the software or not. Not having the choice, i.e., by being told to "just not buy hardware" is not the ideal situation for me as a customer.
And just as you are arguing for the ideal situation for the companies, I'm arguing for the ideal situation for the customer.
This is so incredibly naive. You're basically saying no consumer laws should exist at all. Any commercial activity is fine no matter how underhanded.
Let's have consumer laws but have the right ones. A company shouldn't have the right to hurt me, for example.
If you don't want to get electrocuted by unsafe products just don't buy them. /s
This is such a boomer coded 'deal with it' take. The manufacturer is going to charge you a premium for the software license. If you never intend to use that license, it's completely reasonable to think that we could live in a world where you could uncheck a box and avoid that altogether.
Unfortunately, in practice most PC vendors get paid to bundle a giant pile of bloatware/malware/adware on the system, and they eagerly accept those payments because PCs are a low-margin business. So if your refund actually represented the amount the vendor spent, you'd end up paying them more to have a system without Windows.
You are forgetting that we are free to change and invent new rules whenever we want. PC manufacturers can change this. Some already have, like Lenovo (sorta) and Framework. It does not need to be the way that it has been.
I agree that's reasonable. But does the world you're thinking of have a law that forces that to be the case?
I bought a windows license, it didn't come preinstalled with my PC.
I still want a refund. I feel pretty stupid.
Reminded me of the lawsuit Poul-Henning Kamp tried back in 2010 https://ekstrabladet.dk/nationen/article4137373.ece
Thankfully my work places have had MSDN and/or Technet. I'd use VLKs or request 5 keys per version.
Site blocked as "not secure."
Oh well.
The last laptops I bought had no operating system pre-installed other than some DOS variant or something like that. I installed Linux on them. So, not that I have anything against the website mentioned, I think people who want to avoid Windows, already can do so. The bigger issue I see is that people are often not very computer-savvy, in particular the older generation; the younger generation often knows how to handle computers better, to some extent (yes, even smartphone-only folks). For the elderly, Linux is way too complicated. And it wasn't really simplified sufficiently.
I do wonder whether AI may change that. Now, I don't think so, and I hate AI, but have a look at Omarchy from DHH. Personally I would not use it for many reasons (including the fact that DHH goes on my nerves), but IF the underlying rationale is that people can use Linux in an extremely simplified manner, then this is a good thing.
Isn't the price the manufacturers pay like $10?
That's a lot of work for what might be $44.
You can always get your money back with Linux and any of the BSDs. The claim will have been accepted and processed before you've even filed it!
Does this apply to Apple computers?
You guys should check out Apple.com
MS lawyers might visit you soon
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.
am I the only one that feels like this is kinda tacky on principles, but also how much is it really worth the time, and if you ever resell or VM windows on that same box you can use your baked in license, seems like a small amount of money that is baked into your laptop cost already and they purchase in bulk, I am not convinced the effort of making this campaign was even worth the squeeze and it def is going to be more expensive for vendors to support than it would be for them to increase the price of their products in response...
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.
In my experience, unfortunately it’s fast until you need to use a webapp (Gmail, FB, Netflix…).
For document editing or code it’s pretty awesome but a sluggish web is a deal breaker for many these days.
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.
Luckily these days with anything released since 2020- it's a lot better.
Unless it’s a post-Intel Mac, and that’s all of them these days.
Websites work better on a mac than ever.
You mean Linux, probably, but thats because Chrome doesn't enable hardware acceleration pn ARM, so smooth scroll is disabled. Pretty rough.
I mean Linux because M silicon has no public documentation.
And by Linux, I mean there’s no distribution that runs on a Mac better than a 1990’s consumer HP laptop did in the 1990’s.
And that’s only for M1 and M2 silicon.
Linux doesn’t run on M3 silicon and later at all.
> but a sluggish web is a deal breaker for many these days.
are serious? web is sluggish anywhere... and this is a common "trend"
They mostly use Firefox on the laptop, like 95% of the time - FB, YouTube, GDrive, some web games. I also got them uBlock installed. No issues so far. Firefox works really fast. Memory pressure is low, even when watching YT videos, probably 1.5-2GB at most. I though 6GB won't be enough and installed zram, but honestly - the OS never touches the swap, at least when I tested it. Will check the state again in a couple of months.
Yes, I'm offended, because you excluded Windows Server.
Fair point, hehe. Well in all fairness, I do use it at work because of our customers, but other than that I'd never touch it.
Upgrades to SSD, thinks the OS made it faster. Ok
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.
Both scenarios were on the same machine, BTW.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This just in: multiple factors can contribute to the same result. Shocking!
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.
That’s a good one. Codecs are one of the few excusable reasons to me. It’s fair that we have ever-more strenuous codecs because obviously every new generation of them has better quality per byte.
What’s inexcusable is just that every application out there, web or Electron, the only two kinds that seem to exist anymore, is written with increasingly bloated stacks and layers of JavaScript. I’m pretty sure the system requirements needed for applications to run smoothly are scaling exactly in sync with the spec of the average software engineer’s (or PM’s) computer. For some reason, in 2012 something like Slack or Outlook or an IDE was exactly as performant on a PC with 8GB and 2 cores, as the current versions are today on a modern high-end machine with 32GB of RAM and 10 cores. Yet they do the same tasks. There haven’t been any big innovations in the calendar, or chat, or email - none that inherently require more hardware resources, at least.
even finds network printers on its own
would be interested to see comparison: 1. windows + hdd
2. windows + ssd
3. linux + ssd
I know that Linux can greatly speed up startup, but more likely that ssd gave bigger impact.
The speed improvements based on OS are:
1) Reduced telemetry and background services. 2) More efficient resource management.
Windows is super bloated when it comes to number of background task that transfer information to Microsoft and how much of the system resources their own applications need. Weather APP for example.
Windows telemetry can easily consume one CPU core after startup for 5 to 15 minutes depending on the age of the computer.
Windows updating system uses even more system resources than a Linux distro updating system. Linux is simple file copying-replace while Windows has to perform logical transactions because of how bad the bones of the OS are.
It can take _cleanmgr_ 15 minutes or more to clean up a system when selecting to remove old Windows update installers. Linux just has to mark the file as re-usable and move on. _cleanmgr_ does not even clean out all of the Temp files and requires manual interaction to do so.
Worst of all, Windows makes it a complete pain the ass to manage air gap system with updates. Linux just needs to create a HTTP server pointing to the packages on USB drive.
I think we spend a little bit too much time optimising startup time.
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.
I slightly agree, but it seems like I have to install a restart-required update for my Macs at least every two weeks nowadays. Which not only requires that full reboot sequence, but also 10 minutes of downtime waiting for what I assume is a bunch of encryption work. So I would counter that I would like to see that optimized better. (Of course, I would like it even better if we could just branch to the alternate timeline where Apple wasn’t encrypting and signing the system volume to avoid any chance of us modifying it)
> suspend/resume
Hard agree. Frustrating that I’ve still never had a non-Mac yet that I can just shut the lid and know that it won’t be blowing fans, apparently running, in my freaking backpack. Or wake up randomly in the middle of the night disturbing my sleep.
Nor can I be confident that when I open it, I’ll see the login screen already ready to go. How is this so hard? I would understand with Linux or with a home-built PC. But shouldn’t Lenovo and HP be able to make sleep work correctly?
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.
On Windows, Hibernate works a treat.
Hybernate is basically cold booting.
At least in my experience it's not comparable to suspend + resume in terms of speed.
I just opened my Thinkpad lid.
I was back to where I left when I had counted to eleven.
It’s about six years old, running W11, and was <$600 new. It has a touchscreen I never use.
> Windows (non-Server editions) is a junk OS
Some people realized this 25 years ago
The server editions are junk too, lol.
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 switched to Mint and never looked back. It's one of the easiest transitions IMO, and if you really miss Windows, you can bring the aesthetic with you: https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/themes/view/Chicago95
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.
If I were to transition my 70yo mum from Windows to Linux, the first thing I'd do would be to add such a skin. Yes, there will be differences, but the value of re-injecting some familiarity with the fundamentals cannot be underestimated. She already hates anything post-XP and would probably be delighted to go back.
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 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.)
I absolutely agree that the interfaces up until 2005s and, in case of Mac, early 2010s or so were better in terms of usability, but somehow it’s hard to imagine coming back there from the modern UIs with all their shadows and transparencies and such.
There has to be a middle ground somewhere in this.
>I don't run this kind of skin unironically
… hang on, I’m still parsing this.
bwahaha. I mean to say, I don't run it.
>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
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
Switched to Arch Linux with GNOME. Whenever an issue comes up, I have an AI agent look into it and it gets done. Worth it to get off of Windows.
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).
Love this. That someone is like “yo this was cheap, and windows looks fucked up, but it runs well!”.
maybe Azure Linux? :)
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Each version of Windows is slower and more bloated with spyware than the last. I want a refund for everything since XP.
I bought a pack of Win10 pro keys for $5 a key. Gray market site, but 100% legit.
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.
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.
> 100% legit.
Grey market means the codes often work (valid KMS generation etc) because they match the algo,
and or were validly issued to a manufacturer,
but that doesn’t make them “100% legit”.
Otherwise you wouldn’t be saying “grey market” - it would just be the market.
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.
> I don't know how that KMS AIO tool got on my hard drive, officer; I swear it isn't mine! Someone must have dropped it there accidentally.
> 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.
[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 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.
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.
It literally says:
> Want to buy a licence-free PC directly? Search for your nearest Linux-friendly shop on LinuxSi! (Italian-only).
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
Sure, but imagine how funny it would be if you could buy something from Apple and get a refund because you don't want to use their OS.
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.
Microsoft did it, why can't they? Government Exhibit GX 649 (PDF). https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/atr/legacy/2006/....