Windows As A Service (WaaS)

[Night Wing]

In another topic thread, I mentioned that a former Microsoft employee came into the computer repair shop where I volunteer at and said there was going to be a Windows operating system subscription. The head honchos at Microsoft want a steady stream of income just like they have for subscription Office.

Looking at the article below, it looks like it may be coming in the not too distant future.

https://www.ghacks.net/2023/10/05/a-con ... he-corner/

[fatboy]

This is crazy. Always after any Big Tech company has acquired majority marketshare they push their luck like this. Who knows where it's going to end

[vannilla]

Year of the Linux Desktop™

[Night Wing]

Year of the Linux Desktop™

Since I never needed or was "married" to any Windows only programs, your statement above has been the normal for me since very early in year 2013.

[fatboy]

Year of the Linux Desktop™

That is every year haha

[suzyne]

If Windows gets the features and price right, I don't have a problem paying a yearly subscription for using Windows.

I find the cost of Microsoft 365 to be very reasonable. I get 1TB of cloud storage and full use of the base Office products, and on the single subscription I can share it with up to 5 family members, who all get another 1TB of storage each.

When I compare what I pay for Microsoft 365 with what I used to pay annually for Dropbox, what they used to call Office 365 is a bargain!

So, if Microsoft bundled in cloud storage along with the Windows subscription at a similar capacity and price point as Office, I wouldn't hesitate to pay for it.

[athenian200]

If they do this, i hope they bundle it with the Office subscription and just make it a combined service called Microsoft 365, at least on the consumer side. Paying for both Office as a subscription and Windows as a subscription would be too much for most people, even if the big companies can afford it. Office is the main thing most people want Windows for anyway, aside from games and legacy applications.

The main reason I say this is because I already have an Office 365 subscription, and it would suck to have to worry about dropping it to be able to afford my Windows bill. I would be surprised if there isn't at least a discount for bundling Office and Windows and subscribing to both.

[Moonchild]

I think they would offer it either standalone or with office as two different packages. At least that's what I would do.
Also, I gather that this will be aimed primarily at home users, as they generally don't have restrictions that would make a subscription/tethered model infeasible.

[Night Wing]

Year of the Linux Desktop™

That is every year haha

Off-topic:
According to your signature, you are a linux distro user like I am. A very good article about linux covering the past 30 years is below. It has some good points about linux and some not so good points about linux.

After reading the article, keep scrolling on down the page and read ALL of the public comments there. When you read the comments, there is a person named "Sean" and he is way off base with his comments on linux.

https://linuxiac.com/linux-hits-3-percent-market-share/

I do very well in both Mint and MX Linux and I am not an IT person. Far from it. I've only used the linux Terminal a grand total of 6 times in 10 years. If I need any help with a sticky problem on Mint, the Mint forums is where I go to and I have always had a friendly person help me out to solve my little "irritation" that I'm stuck on in Mint. Those times are now far and few inbetween for me.

If a linux forum is non friendly, then it most likely is the realm of the power users who are all "command line" people. They are not friendly because they see no reason to help a newbie. These people will be quick to tell a newbie, he/she needs to learn and use a very easy distro like Mint. A classic example of these types of people, are the people who use linux Arch and are members of the Arch forums.

[Moonchild]

Off-topic:

If a linux forum is non friendly, then it most likely is the realm of the power users who are all "command line" people. They are not friendly because they see no reason to help a newbie. These people will be quick to tell a newbie, he/she needs to learn and use a very easy distro like Mint. A classic example of these types of people, are the people who use linux Arch and are members of the Arch forums.

You have to understand there are different distros with different target audiences out there. That doesn't necessarily mean they "are unfriendly", but rather that their target audience doesn't match people coming from a different O.S. with zero knowledge of the guts of Linux. e.g. Gentoo/Arch and Slackware would be aiming more at the traditional UNIX-inclined users, and expect users to have some command-line knowledge or wanting to fast-track what knowledge they are missing in that area. Some distros do heavily rely on using the command-line, and aren't for all people. If the community tells you to use a different distro they aren't being unfriendly; rather, they are telling you to use the tool that best matches your way of working instead of forcing the issue. So, you may want to give them some slack there, as they are, in fact, trying to hep you It's no different than me saying to people to use the browser that works best for them, instead of trying to use Pale Moon and expecting the Chromified web to work 100% all the time without effort.

[Night Wing]

If the community tells you to use a different distro they aren't being unfriendly; rather, they are telling you to use the tool that best matches your way of working instead of forcing the issue. So, you may want to give them some slack there, as they are, in fact, trying to hep you It's no different than me saying to people to use the browser that works best for them, instead of trying to use Pale Moon and expecting the Chromified web to work 100% all the time without effort.[/offtopic]

Off-topic:
The way you inform new people Pale Moon might not be for them, you do it in a "cordial way". But on the Arch forums, I know from experience when I briefly tried using Arch linux and was a member on the Arch forums site. Quite a few people over there have the same "abrasive attitude and sharp tongue" toward newbies that Tobin has and had on your forums site here. This is why I dropped Arch immediately and never tried using it again.

I know you probably don't have time, but if you ever get a little spare time, try using Arch linux. If you get into difficulties using it, register to become a member of the Arch forums site and ask for help. You will run into those people pretty quick like I did. And you will not like the way you will be treated.

[Moonchild]

Off-topic:

but if you ever get a little spare time, try using Arch linux. If you get into difficulties using it, register to become a member of the Arch forums site and ask for help. You will run into those people pretty quick like I did. And you will not like the way you will be treated.

I think I have better ways to spend my spare time
Not saying people aren't unfriendly or abrasive, I just wanted to point out that just by its nature you may be redirected elsewhere, and that that in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. The rest purely depends on tone, which can often be misinterpreted through text as well. Just saying

[Mæstro]

Does anyone else remember when Windows 10 was expected to be a service in this sense? I see no reason the result this time should be otherwise.

[fatboy]

Does anyone else remember when Windows 10 was expected to be a service in this sense? I see no reason the result this time should be otherwise.

Windows 10 the rolling release? Yes, just like all promises made my MS.

[Moonchild]

Windows 10 the rolling release? Yes, just like all promises made my MS.

No... the initial plan for Windows 10 was for it to be a subscription-based O.S., not just a rolling release.

[frostknight]

If a linux forum is non friendly, then it most likely is the realm of the power users who are all "command line" people. They are not friendly because they see no reason to help a newbie. These people will be quick to tell a newbie, he/she needs to learn and use a very easy distro like Mint. A classic example of these types of people, are the people who use linux Arch and are members of the Arch forums.

I once was in an irc chat and asked about an arch based distro and when I revealed it wasn't strictly arch I was using, they gave me the "I am better than you shtick"

So... yeah, arch is a piece of crap. Also, it is not lightweight or Keep it simple stupid anymore.

Both of those ideals died after systemd was infected into archlinux. Although before systemd, its possible dbus and other crap like that was already bloating it.

I have slightly more respect for them than I do for windows developers, google developers, apple developers and most proprietary software vendors.

Which is a good way of saying, not much.

Year of the Linux Desktop™

I don't know, its possible that the year could come if the big tech operating system corporations screw up enough. I would tend to doubt they would screw up THAT much.

But if they screw up enough that even corporations cannot stand them, then its possible. That would be quite a feat even for microsoft, google or apple.

I live to see such a screw up and yet also fear it as well. That would be a huge mess that would probably drag down most of the web. Even if it led to ditching proprietary operating systems for good, I would still be hesitant to want that to happen due to the sheer scale of damage it would do. Probably knock off 75% of the web.

No... the initial plan for Windows 10 was for it to be a subscription-based O.S., not just a rolling release.

I am surprised that windows 10 being a rolling release didn't cause more trouble for people.

Although, as long as it wasn't a bleeding edge rolling release, it wouldn't be the worst trainwreck. I think they had enough sense for that, at least.

There is a worse dream that microsoft and google would also love to succeed with on the masses. But as dumb as people have gotten, even really dumb people have a small kernel of intelligence to know that cloud based os, meaning you don't have physical access to the hardware, would be incredibly corrupt.

By this I mean, they only give you the minimal amount of hardware but most of the processing stuff is on some server out there. Just to clarify...

What you meant was different, but yeah. Hopefully, it takes a thousand years before people are that stupid, or more.

The moment the public accepts something like I mentioned, you know that hell is close to coming to earth. Whatever you think that to mean, is up to you.

My point is, bad things... heavily corrupt malevolent things

[moonbat]

even really dumb people have a small kernel of intelligence to know that cloud based os, meaning you don't have physical access to the hardware, would be incredibly corrupt.

It's not a cloud based OS, it is one that has dependencies on the cloud including subscription verification. Obviously there needs to be something local to your laptop/desktop to interface with the hardware. And you vastly overestimate the unwashed masses' level of intelligence

[frostknight]

It's not a cloud based OS, it is one that has dependencies on the cloud including subscription verification. Obviously there needs to be something local to your laptop/desktop to interface with the hardware. And you vastly overestimate the unwashed masses' level of intelligence

Trust me, I know people can be really stupid, otherwise microsoft wouldn't have a huge choke-hold on the industry despite the antifeatures increasing exponentially over time.

Not to mention, their operating system is bloat and there are so many better operating systems that use a 1/50th of the resources that it uses. Some would be a 500th even.

I know its not a cloud based os, I think you misunderstood what I said.

My point was more, that is what corporations like microsoft would love to be able to do and make a huge profit. They would also have the ultimate DRM that would be mostly unbreakable if that happened.

But I think you overestimate the stupidity of the masses when it comes to a situation like the one I described. People are very suspicious of corporations today. The intelligence of the human race would need be a fraction of what it is now to go to that level of dumb I would think. I would hope I would be correct in this assumption. Although, no guarantees for the future even if not now. This is what I would guess, that's all.

But yeah, there would need to be something local to laptop/desktop interface with the hardware.

[Night Wing]

Trust me, I know people can be really stupid, otherwise microsoft wouldn't have a huge choke-hold on the industry despite the antifeatures increasing exponentially over time.

Microsoft does not have the huge choke-hold like you think it does if you mean operating system wise.

Back in the year 2000, Microsoft's Windows had about a 97% marketshare when it came to desktop tower computers and laptop computers. Fast forward to today and the marketshare for both desktop tower computers and laptops computers when using Windows is around 70% now.

Many people now use their smartphones, instead of using desktop tower computers and and laptops, to access the internet. This is why the Windows operating system has lost a lot of their marketshare.

As for me. I do not own a smartphone. Just an old fashioned clam style flip cell phone and my phone is "not" connected to the internet.

I have four computers (2 desktop towers, 2 laptops) and all of them run linux distros, Mint and MX Linux. I got into Linux in December of 2012 because I absolutely hated Windows 8. And in January of 2013, I was really hot and heavy into Linux since I was "distro hopping" trying different linux distros and desktop environments to find a linux distro which would be my choice to replace the Windows operating system.

By March of 2013, I settled on Mint in Xfce . Today, I still use Mint in Xfce and also MX Linux in Xfce. So the rise of smartphones and and people like me ditching the Windows operating system is the main reason why the Windows operating system has been slowly bleeding market share for the last 23 years.

[frostknight]

Back in the year 2000, Microsoft's Windows had about a 97% marketshare when it came to desktop tower computers and laptop computers. Fast forward to today and the marketshare for both desktop tower computers and laptops computers when using Windows is around 70% now.

70% Is still a huge amount hence why I call it a chokehold.

I have four computers (2 desktop towers, 2 laptops) and all of them run linux distros, Mint and MX Linux. I got into Linux in December of 2012 because I absolutely hated Windows 8. And in January of 2013, I was really hot and heavy into Linux since I was "distro hopping" trying different linux distros and desktop environments to find a linux distro which would be my choice to replace the Windows operating system.

I got into linux because when I upgraded windows 8 to 8.1, I noticed a dramatic increase in resource usage. 3 times more! I became suspicious did searches and after talking to someone I knew, who mentioned that they asked at a board meeting at a well known corporation, if windows had a backdoor, everyone was silent.

This became the catalyst for me trying to abandon windows. I gave up every so often, but eventually probably 1.5 years later, I finally switched for good. Windows 8.0's UI was hella ugly.

Is the idea behind being modern looking like a trashy piece of eye candy that makes people like myself feel like their eyes have been assaulted so that I would want to pursue charges?

Although to be fair, I had thought since windows xp was gone that windows was becoming uglier. Now I realize it was way sooner. The ui changes kept getting worse and worse since 98.

Btw, isn't MX semi-elated to antix? What were your thoughts of antix?

I tried antix, its gui was a bit tricky for me last time I tried due to it being different than the classic debian installer which I had used many times.

Many people now use their smartphones, instead of using desktop tower computers and and laptops, to access the internet. This is why the Windows operating system has lost a lot of their marketshare.

As for me. I do not own a smartphone. Just an old fashioned clam style flip cell phone and my phone is "not" connected to the internet.

I don't know which is dumber security wise, smartphones or windows... although, privacy wise android probably is worse. Security wise its probably somewhat better due to open source being a small somewhat part of their priorities since early on.

As for usage wise, smartphones being popular makes me cringe. I cannot state this enough, touchscreens are crap and I absolutely detest them. If I had a choice, I would buy a bigger phone that has a keyboard if that was possible even if I couldn't put it in my pocket.