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Microsoft closes the door on Windows 11 supporting older hardware
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2024
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Objective is a very strong word there. "[OS] Replacement" could mean any number of things.
They're "technically" correct. That's what Torvalds initially created it as. But what it initially was, and now is are very different things. I'm sure they would call OSX a BSD replacement and not a Windows replacement. Despite many people replacing windows with it. It's pedantically obtuse.
Right now the biggest wall from wider consumer adoption of Linux. Is honestly, simply the lack of systems offered to consumers with it. Outside of a few games with kernel level anti cheat. Or highly proprietary specialized softwares. There's very little that you cannot currently do on Linux that you can do on Windows.
Your Average user/consumer doesn't install any operating system. Whether it is Windows Linux or Mac OS. They simply run what the computer came with. And that's always been windows unless it is an Apple computer. That's part of what the 1999 antitrust suit would have sought to remedy. Microsoft punished any company that had dared to even offer systems with Linux for a long time. And nothing was ever really done to stop it.
No they wouldn't. That's Linux, among other things, because when it was gaining popularity, BSDs were defending from lawsuits and rewriting litigious parts belonging to AT&T (that is, preserved from original Unix sources).
No. Actually no, that's not the biggest wall.
Under modern Windows you can run software compiled for Windows XP. Under Linux you'll have a lot of sex with your system before achieving that kind of backwards compatibility.
Since you mentioned BSDs, and they are similar to Linux in daily usage, with FreeBSD you may install compat4x, compat5x and so on packages and run rather old binaries. FreeBSD version of Opera browser (yep, they made a FreeBSD version), which was a binary from Opera Software, didn't receive an update since 2013 and till 2021 and it was in working condition.
This wall for your typical Windows user is hard to describe. They are doing something the only normal way they understand and are told that they are holding it wrong. Say, they install a package for the previous major version of their distribution. Or just try to run some binary downloaded from somewhere and it tells them angry things about libc version and possibly other libraries.
Also the "advanced" things under Linux are not usable for many people, and the "user-friendly" things are complex and buggy.
Of course, Windows users also would really like to use their familiar Windows applications, but that's not as important, Wine solves a lot of it.