Windows 7 support ended for good, Windows 8.1 is next

[vertigo]

...

First of all, I don't disagree on the usability. As I said, there's a reason I'm not using Linux myself. But it has come a long way, and continues to progress, meanwhile, Windows is regressing in a lot of ways in this regard. So my hope is that eventually Linux will reach the point it's a suitable replacement for Windows for at least most, if not all, users. I doubt that time will come by 2025, but I'm hopeful, and even if it's close I plan to jump ship at that point, because I have zero intention of using W11.

Yes, it's absolutely more difficult to do certain things in Linux vs Windows, but, there are a couple things to consider. First of all, part of why it's more difficult is because people are so used to Windows. That, combined with some things being genuinely more difficult, but many things being the same or even easier, makes it hard to transition. It's the same as with Office vs Libre Office. Libre is generally just as easy, though some things are certainly more difficult, and those few things combined with the difference of it, rather than overall difficulty, are what cause me to not use it. If I were to force myself to use it, over time I would get used to it and it would no longer be foreign and would therefore become easier. Linux is the same, to an extent. And Windows has its fair share of things that are difficult and a pain to deal with and a massive waste of time. It's just that it's the devil I/you know.

As for the firewall issues, Linux has more power and flexibility than Windows does, at least by default, but yes, it is "harder" (again, how much of this is that it's actually harder vs just different from what we're used to has to be considered). For a corporate/government/military network, there will certainly be trained people setting it up, just like there are with Windows, so people that know how to do it will be handling those aspects, and the users simply need to use their computers, just like is the case with Windows. The main difference is software compatibility which, as I said, is getting better, but yes, it still has a long way to go. But most users, whether in a work setting or even at home, just need to be able to run a browser, office programs, and a handful of others (email, graphics, etc), and Linux is well-suited for such basic use, especially when set up properly by a professional. It's used for the vast majority of web servers for a reason. Even MS uses Linux for a lot of their backend stuff.

Yes, many distros have become larger and more resource-intensive. You can't really criticize it for not looking as nice as or having similar features to Windows then criticize it for bulking up, which is required to improve the UI and add in features. But IME it still runs better than Windows on similar hardware, and I had enough issues using Windows on my 16GB laptop (granted, I do more than most, and Windows itself was fine) and wouldn't dare even bother trying to run it on 4GB. Running it on 4GB, you're almost certainly using page file/swap space. In Windows, this is automatic, so it will work ok. In Linux, if you didn't set it up properly, then yeah, you're going to have performance issues. That's not because it can't do well with lower-end hardware, but because it's not properly configured. Set up properly, it can perform just as well, and in most cases better, than Windows, at least IME and in the experience of many others.

You also can't really criticize Linux for not supporting file systems that are proprietary. That's not its fault, it's MS's for making them proprietary. Furthermore, NTFS isn't the best file system, it's just the most widespread because it's what Windows uses. People shouldn't really care that Linux doesn't natively support an inferior file system, because they have various other ones to choose from which are superior to it. That's the whole reason for ReFS, because MS themselves acknowledged they needed to improve on NTFS, but that's gone basically nowhere. So yeah, Linux doesn't natively support it, but just because Windows does doesn't mean much, because last I saw it's basically dead in the water. Also, with Linux kernel 5.15, released about a year ago, NTFS support was added. I haven't yet tested it, but it's there now. As for FAT32, it's extremely antiquated and has little to no use anymore. And exFAT, FAT32's successor, was also proprietary, so again, not Linux's fault, but it was recently open-sourced and is being built into Linux. And enabling it before wasn't difficult at all, and Android, which is Linux, handles it just fine by default, but yes, not natively, though it works perfectly fine so not really an issue. You could, and should, just as readily criticize Windows for not natively supporting Linux file systems. In fact, that's even worse, since those are open-source and therefore they don't have that blocking them like Linux does with Windows file systems.

Regardless of anything else, the Linux philosophy and how they consider their users is much different and better than the MS/Windows philosophy and how they consider their product (i.e. the users and their data). Obviously not everyone feels the same, but I'd much rather use an OS that respects my privacy and my decision to do or not do something or to do it a certain way rather than one that harvests my data to use or sell it, tests the idea of placing ads in the OS, constantly forces me to do things I don't want to do and to do things when and/or how I don't want to do them, and constantly changes things to make it more and more difficult to work around their autocratic methods. The only reason I'm still using Windows instead of Linux is because, as you've pointed out, Linux isn't quite there yet for usability. But they've come a long way and are absolutely closing the gap.

[NikoB]

There is not even a hint of the security of financial transactions in any Linux distribution. They are full of holes, just like before. Error upon error. And the source codes, where they are, on the contrary, allow criminals to search for exploits much easier. And the ability to fix the sources of public distributions also allows you to quietly integrate Trojans directly into the distributions of the system. there is practically no control over how malicious code gets there on a public basis - there is an even greater mess than in closed commercial systems for developing software and OS.

LibreOffice was nowhere near MS Office. It does not have support for a bunch of commercial software that requires exchange at least for the banal DDE.

Why doesn't Windows support Linux file systems? Yes, for the same reason that Linux does not support NTFS - the GPL3 license requires you to provide the source codes of these modules as part of Windows, and this is a priori impossible for a closed commercial system.

Ordinary users who manage their finances have 100% nothing to do under Linux - there are 100 times more dangers waiting for them. And in terms of business, there is even nothing to do there - most of the high-quality commercial software is not under Linux and never will be.

Never will iron developers allow their intellectual property to be open source. So forget - Linux and other open systems will always drag out a miserable existence in the backyard of commercial software. As if the Linux sectarians would not like the opposite.

[RobertJasiek]

Didn't even realize that was your site. If it is up-to-date, it doesn't appear so. The header says "2021-04-19 newest contents, 2021-04-19 last update"

For your pleasure (and after a fight with my provider), I have updated my page with the declaration "2023-01-13 newest confirmation of applicability [...]".