Why am i hearing Linux music?
Blastbeat of millions of penguins stomping.
Ah, the famous SuSE songs, instant classics.
Only the real know (i have never used openSUSE)
Bah gawd, that’s Stone Cold’s music!
This is the way of the world right now.
“Oh no, things are going bad for us, raise prices so we will be OK when this dies!”
Screw the future. Sad times.
I didn’t expect my PC to become a better investment than my house - until the bubble pops.
Now I also know the feeling of buying something when it was more affordable. I can now dish out advice like “You should just buy fewer boba teas, so you could afford a PC like I did when buying it with my student loan.”
Every RAM stick I bought in the past 15 years is worth more per GB now than when I bought it… If you bought RAM in 2008 the same is true, I just didn’t buy RAM at that point.
To me this is positive news. The less appealing Windows machines are, the better. Let Windows PC rot peacefully.
While I understand your sentiment about Windows, this is how you end up in a world filled with iPad kids who become adults who accept technology that they don’t own.
Or a manufacturer finally decides to make a budget Linux laptop that starts selling better than expected.
Y’know, some manufacturers used to do this actually, and more might start again.
Only if we stay quiet.
I would love if pc manufacturers would just ship laptops with e.g. Linux mint or fedora and just knock off the windows licence cost. I don’t even mind if they have to ship it with bloatware, that’s fine, as long as it just doesn’t ship windows. Savvy users will just uninstall it
It’s possible to get refunds for unused OEM Windows licenses in the EU.
Wow, nice. It sounds like Asus makes it the easiest, reimbursing for the license without shipping your machine to them. I don’t understand why the others that will reimburse require physical inspection of the machine.
to discourage you to do so
This, and probably clearing the license from BIOS. Otherwise you keep the license. Not sure how Asus resolves this. Maybe they just don’t care.
I would love a tick box setup. Maybe 2 Linux distro options and a windows option for +$X or whatever so ur laptop can arrive ready to set up with the OS desired on it. Should lower cost for customers who don’t need windows, and maybe people on the fence will decide window isn’t worth however much more it cost to get and order the Linux version. The more units are sold with Linux the more incentive there will be to sort drivers for more hardware etc.
Dell has this.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/scr/laptops/appref=ubuntu-linux-os
No clue if you’re still paying for the Windows license in that price though.
So the computer without Windows/with Linux will be cheaper, right/ 🥹
Yes. Plenty of manufacturers do sell computers without windows.
Yes, that exact thing was the crux of a major lawsuit at one point.
If a company is doing it it’s already is. But most are selling you windows compulsively.
Huh, that changed? The last time i bought a Laptop in 2018, it was still more expensive to get one without Windows preinstalled.
Oh, they fucking do that? Bloody hell, that’s low. Maybe it depends on a country, but when I bought my previous Lenovo around 2019, they had an option without the OS and it was slightly cheaper, and only available for a small subset of laptops.
The only new laptop I got since was Framework, and obviously, they’re also great in this regard, but I feel like they’re outliers.
Insert the Padme Anakin meme here.
Always was… just had to find the seller who sells you the laptop without a prepurchased license/preinstalled windows. Sadly was always higher tier stuff that had a choice.
Finally something not making Valve’s hardware more expensive.
Thry want us to subscribe to computing.
I am starting to thing this entire thing is some weird orchestrated pile of bull shit to get pwople to stop buyingPCs because its cheaper to use rented VMs with AI spyware built in. Just point your old “slow” compiter at the server in your browser (only spyware Chrome supported). Then they can DRM everytjing and charge subscriptions.
I don’t know if that’s the entire thing, but it is definitely part of it
Bingo!
It was always believed that Windows OS was a “loss leader” for Microsoft.
Windows OS will never show a profit, when you take into account the development and testing time and effort. I mean, a one time purchase that’s expected to be supported for years!?!
Side note: This also explains why Windows 11 is de-evolving into an AI generated, ad ridden, telemetry gathering, cesspool of an OS (“we gotta make money somehow - think of the share holders”)
But, what Windows had done is create a platform for Microsoft to upsell (and vendor lock-in) profitable applications like Office, Outlook, Teams, etc.
However, that business model doesn’t work anymore. As, all of Microsoft’s products are now in the cloud. They’re all subscription bases, which means predictable and indefinite revenue. User’s don’t need to be running on Windows - they just need a web-browser or thin-client. Microsoft already has people (brainwashed into) wanting Office - they don’t need to _force _ people into trying Office.
tl;dr: Developing and supporting Windows OS is a financial drain for Microsoft, and they’re doing everything they can to scuttle it.
been saying that was the goal for over a decade.
AI data centers become “personal cloud PC centers” when the AI bubble pops…
I was gonna say the government will just use it to surveil you, but realised that a “personal cloud PC center” is essentially the same thing except for the branding change (gov. vs big tech).
And you gotta keep in mind that big tech wants to be the government
Makes it so much easier for the government to monitor one data center instead of a million separate computers.
This is the way
More OEMs should ship devices with Linux as an option, discounted by the Windows license cost.
The problem there is Windows still has negative cost for OEMs due to all the bloatware they bundle.
They get paid for that McAfee and Epic Games icon.
meanwhile on the Dell website
EDIT: $100 of that difference comes from Win11 requiring an SSD upgrade from 512GB to 1TB
That’s crazy! I had no idea they were charging that much now. Thanks for sharing!
What currency is that? Windows 11 home is $140 USD.
The “discount” “+$100” 💀
I think that might be losing a $100 discount from the other configuration, possibly because they have excess smaller drives that don’t meet win11 requirements?
OEMs: Sorry, best I can do is tripling the amount of pre-installed bloatware that I get kickbacks on, to not only offset the cost but raise profits more
Here in Brazil, a lot of vendors are offering laptops with linux, but they do this just to offer a lower price, and put the most weird distro possible, that no one knew existed, so everyone who buys have to install their own os. The bad thing about it is that it creates a really bad first impression about linux on common users, who mostly end up asking the tech person from the family to install windows for them
They just expect everyone to pirate windows
Why don’t they just install Mint, Zorin, or even xUbuntu (XFCE versions of each)…
That’s 3 examples with actual support and a user base >3 edgelord cat bois.
Most distro maintainers would expect something for commercial licences. Can’t have them take all your hard earned money! Max I can do is 0$.
They’re usually gpl licensed. You can do whatever you want with it (including selling it for a bazillion monies) as long as you give the code too.
im surprised they don’t just do the underhanded method of acquiring windows.
well I’d imagine theres some stores willing to oblige doing that.
curious sakes, what distro do they preload on customers.
Yeah I doubt my chinese MiniPC came with official Windows. Had recommendation tp go through initial set up offline. Not that I kept Windows. I wiped it and put Fedora on it.
Yeah that’s weird. Quite a few of the smaller refurb shops here (south East Asia) just pirate Windows and Office suite.
The Framework laptops have been selling out with backlog orders now. But with new models recently out, all the Linux ones sold out well before the Windows ones.
I think it just kind of goes to say, if you know a bit about computers, Linux is a go-to. Of course those that are a bit tech-savvy as well would just get a Windows one, clear it off and install the distro of their choice. Plus once upgrade is done, my OS and files are all there like nothing happened. Things like setting up Windows again on a new device or new install is like a full day task.
They used to have agreements to make it difficult to do so. I don’t know if that’s still the case but it’s pretty awful. I think OEMs had to pay licenses for every machine shipped regardless if it had a windows license.
The other issue is that oems have a large amount of compatibility and support built up over the years for windows. They also know their customers can deal with Microsoft for “support” and ignore driver and support costs for whatever distro of Linux they were to choose.
Sure an OEM could lead the way and show everyone else the path to freedom but think of the shareholders
they actually make money on many of those windows preinstalls due to all the bullshit they get paid to put on.
The fun part is that they can bundle an equal amount of bloatware on linux for even more revenue.
Amid ram price hikes Linux has decided to double its license fee. It will now be available for $0
Linus better be watching it, or I’m switching to TempleOS
That’s twice as much as I was paying, I’m going to write a strongly worded email to that penguin guy
That’s twice as much as I was paying
Only half as much as I was paying, though, so I’m pretty happy about it.
Excuse you, that penguin guy has a name
Tux has had enough of this bullshit
He writes those right back so be prepared hahaha
Flatpak and Snap be like: Yes, we’ll double the RAM…
AND storage…
Ah, yes. Decreasing market share in a shrinking market segment? Obviously, the solution is to raise prices!
Microsoft continues to be one of the greatest Linux promoters in the world.
Look. It’s simple. You’re paying for Copilot, whatever you want to or not.
That LLM response from the search bar when you were just searching for a file? That’s not free, we have to pay for that! If you didn’t want it you shouldn’t have accidentally triggered it by needing to search for a file. That’s on you.
Cant you ask the shop to sell you the machine without windows? And get a rebate for it, since you’re going to remove it anyway.
As far as I know only Lenovo is offering to omit the Windows licence off some of their computers, but only if you buy online of course.
Dell might do a similar thing for enterprise customers, I actually don’t know.
As I understand it, most enterprises have an agreement with Microsoft for commercial licensing of Windows that lets them pay per user instead of per machine. Given that most enterprises tend to lock in a contract with their hardware provider of choice, it wouldn’t surprise me if they had something in there to omit Windows since they already pay for it directly. Plus enterprises windows has features for managing windows at scale (group policy, centralized auth, etc).
I worked for one of the IT departments at my university and we got Ubuntu machines straight from Dell on occasion. I recall those machines being somewhat quirky if we tried to flash them with Windows later (might have been missing a TPM header, or equally arbitrary hardware requirement, but it’s been like 10 years).
In the consumer space, Framework will also let you skip buying a windows licence as well.
In my company we already use a standardised Windows 11 Enterprise image, so the Windows 11 Pro licences that come with most PCs are of absolutely no use to us (apart from when we resell them, and even then you can get OEM keys legally for a couple of Euros so they’re not worth much).
Not really. Most computers are sold off a shelf at a big box store, pre-configured and ready to go. The license for windows is flashed onto the hardware, so the staff doesn’t really have a way to remove it from the computer.
If enough people start asking about it then it might persuade big box stores to test the waters with a few Linux-based units or at least an unformated drive.
Big Box stores want you to buy a product and leave. They want fewer skus that work out of the box. Windows sucks ass, but most of the time you end up with a functional, if shitty, PC.
Also - Microsoft and Apple pay for floorspace at the big box stores. What Linux distro is gonna do that?
What Linux distro is gonna do that?
I guess Chromebooks, kinda?
Sure, trade in your gremlin for a pinto…
I’d rather keep my Pacer thanks
