Here is the thing. MS Windows has no alternative. There is no other OS that:
- is primarily user friendly (no terminal use, good accessibility support, well known patterns, well made paid human translation)
- has drivers working out of the box with every single hardware
- has long term software support
- has long term hardware support
- has a healthy closed-source specialized software ecosystem
- has good developer support
- has not perfect but reasonably future proof API
- good interoperability with majority of the other software
Once you step out of programming or hobbyist use it is 90% Windows for the use cases one uses a full fledged computer. Yes you can replace many things with a tablet or a smartphone.
You can't replace a PC with a tablet for accounting, customer management, CAD, printing, publishing, manufacturing, simulation, advanced reporting, large document processing, centrally controlled IT and many other things.
The professional grade software you do those built on Windows, Office and Active Directory. They trust the backwards compatibility and wide range of API and integration Windows ecosystem provides.
People don't use computers because they like them. They use them because they do work for their goals.
Even for nonprofessional use case Windows still has the best hardware support. For example you cannot use old low DPI monitors with Macs anymore; the text is unreadable. Certain audio workstations doesn't work with ARM chips.
I disagree. For vast, vast majority of cases, linux would likely do the trick these days. People would complain initially and, predictably, would complain again if new functionality was taken away from them. But that is just human nature.
Lets talk reality. More and more applications users access live in a browser.. you technically could run the entire company on dumb terminals if you were so inclined ( and jobs were sufficiently.. in dire of automation, but for one reason or another human is doing those ). Windows is not needed for that.
You could argue banking/finance with excel ( and there are some neat things Office introduced with 365 ), which is presumably why that sector is going to be locked in for a while, but then.. my last class at university, all kids were running google docs and they will be making decisions one day. I am not sure that bodes well for MS/Office/Windows.
As for "accounting, customer management, CAD, printing, publishing, manufacturing, simulation, advanced reporting, large document processing, centrally controlled IT", you might be right, but somehow I doubt it. There is nothing magical about Windows. It is currently held by inertia and contracts, but even inertia ends eventually.
The problem is that there's no Linux. The Average Joe cannot download Linux from Linux.com.
He will waste hours, maybe days learning about different distributions, window managers, packaging, etc. This is true even for experienced professionals. It's demotivating IMHO.
There's a book named "The Paradox of Choice", it gives a good psychological overview of this topic. No distribution is ready to compete against Windows
> my last class at university, all kids were running google docs
Corporate use looks nothing like that. I was actually working in an accounting firm that tried to move people over to google sheets and docs. Took about a week for people to realise the sheets plan is utterly idiotic.
Docs lasted about a month before even the “thought leaders” in charge of pushing the initiative went quiet.
For casual use sure, but it’s no more replacing office than ms paint is replacing photoshop.
> You can't replace a PC with a tablet for accounting, customer management, CAD, printing, publishing, manufacturing, simulation, advanced reporting, large document processing, centrally controlled IT and many other things
For each one of those examples there's already a superior Linux based choice.
No. There is not. Without changing how "Linux" is built from the very C library to binary loader and graphics APIs, there cannot be either.
Try finding alternatives to Excel with its entire feature set (no cheating all SQL db integration and VBA equivalent scripting, plugin APIs should be there), PowerPoint with all the integration with other Office, Solidworks with its entire feature set, Altium with its entire feature set, Siemens NX, Catia, SAP, Ansys, Active Directory, Adobe Creative Suite or Affinity or CorelDRAW, Cubase, Sibelius just a start. And the software you mention has to have succesful companies behind them and has to be used widely.
These articles are always weird because they ignore the most likely next steps for people who don’t want Recall:
1. Don’t turn recall on
2. Switch to Mac
Jumping straight to the Linux Desktop deep end after using Windows for years is an unlikely change path for most. These arguments ignore the fact that most Windows users have a lot of Windows-specific apps that they use, such as games.
I think the real audience for these articles isn’t Windows users at all. It’s for Linux users to pay themselves on the back for not using Windows.
Speak for yourself I suppose. I can hop between Linux (KDE, Gnome, whatever) and Windows and still feel like my muscle memory for OS interactions and application shortcuts still works. There are minor differences, but things like copy and paste still work properly.
When I try to use a Mac, everything is just ... different. CMD instead of Ctrl, buttons on the other side of windows, inconsistent maximize logic between programs, whatever Finder is supposed to be doing with folder navigation. It's certainly learnable with effort, and I can move around the OS competently now with some practice, but it's just unpleasant enough that I'd rather not use it as my daily driver.
I wasn’t talking about long time Linux users like yourself. I was referring to people who have been using Windows for years and were looking for something to switch to.
> I can hop between Linux (KDE, Gnome, whatever)
If you’ve been using Linux long enough to be familiar with KDE and Gnome and even know the difference between them, you’re very firmly a Linux enthusiast user. It’s easy to forget that the average computer user isn’t really interested in the details of their window management. They want the OS to get out of the way and support them, not be something they’re actively invested in.
> Jumping straight to the Linux Desktop deep end after using Windows for years is an unlikely change path for most. These arguments ignore the fact that most Windows users have a lot of Windows-specific apps that they use, such as games.
I think nowadays you would have a much worse experience switching from windows to mac, as you said, the user wants their apps and games to carry over, but you are actually going to have a much better time getting those to carry over to linux. Specially regarding games, just the fact that Steam runs almost any Windows game effortlessly on linux is a big deal. Meanwhile, Apple has made sure to burn all the bridges they could with game developers and game compatibility in the last decade or so.
I think Linux Desktop users have become blinded to how much easier it is for the average person (not developer, command-line enthusiasts) to use Mac or Windows than Linux.
I have Mac, Windows, and Linux machines that I use for different purposes. None of them has been perfect, but the amount of time I’ve lost fighting driver issues, weird upgrade quirks, software incompatibility problems, and other little loose ends over the users has been a magnitude worse on the Linux machines than anything else. In the moment it doesn’t really feel like much because it’s similar to daily work with Linux servers, but looking back it’s just so much more predictable to have basic things working on Mac or Windows than on Linux.
Windows for all it's faults is a very open ecosystem, in contrast Macs aren't that appealing. Especially if you aren't running iphones and ipads etc.
I do agree that Recall isn't the reason to switch though. The abuse Microsoft has put their users through the last few years has been unimaginable, to the point where switching to anything will feel liberating. Even Linux desktop.
> […] Windows-specific apps that they use, such as games.
As if many Windows games don't work on Linux via proton, to the point that Valve's Steam Deck runs on Linux and is "good enough" most of the time. Compatibility purely depends on the game and more often than not incompatibilities are caused by anti-cheat mechanisms.
And about jumping to Linux: we had Windows computers in my family, originally with Windows 7, then upgraded to Windows 8.1, and once 8.1 was EOL, they were reinstalled with Linux (KDE as desktop environment). Since these computers were mainly used for email, web browsing, and some basic "office activities" like writing a simple document occasionally, there was exactly no issue with it. KDE itself is also similar enough to a Windows desktop that it wasn't hard for anyone to learn the few relevant things that are different. I'd be quite surprised if this was different for the majority of current Windows users.
Recall isn't the argument, it's just the latest example for the same argument: you should be able to decide what your computer does, inspect it, modify and share.
Not sure if you pay attention to how Microsoft operates (think IE/Edge) but they’ll accidentally-on-purpose toggle that ON with a magical Windows Update.
This is kind of an outdated argument and nearly a solved problem - the majority of Steam's library can be run near-effortlessly on Linux today. I'd expect a large portion of Windows PC gamers to be aware of that, too, at least in the US. I don't really know anyone who's tied to any Windows-specific apps that aren't games, either.
Games are the easier part. There are a few examples of software which is only available for Windows and Mac or even Windows only, like professional audio software or various CAD tools. If you need one of those, you can't really avoid Windows / Mac and usually there is no proper replacement for such software that works on Linux. Of course you can have a dedicated Windows or Mac machine just for those programs, but that's still not ideal.
I no longer buy this argument at all. Between the work Steam put into Proton, this is had been largely a non-issue. About the only game I needed to use VM for was Fallout 3 ( I didn't feel like messing with it for more than 15 minutes ). There are some things Windows is still good for, but that list is growing shorter.
<< I think the real audience for these articles isn’t Windows users at all. It’s for Linux users to pay themselves on the back for not using Windows.
The intended audience is the people, who most need to hear it, because they do not realize there are options other than OS1 or OS2. And that it is not nearly as hard as it was only a decade ago.
Windows 10 made me buy a mac... After many years of alternating between Windows and Linux, the lazy "drivers just work" alternative without all the Microsoft bloat is a Mac.
Linux is great, love it on the server, but it's never a "just works" experience on any modern laptop type hardware.
Does a high dpi screen, WiFi 6 and hibernate all work out of the box these days and keep working for a few years? Because I still see coworkers with issues in those areas even in 2024, while a simple macbook air does all of those no questions asked. Maybe they're not doing it right, but it looks close to my experience up to a few years ago.
It's hit or miss. Some laptops work flawlessly, others do not. And then there's the gamut of features that not many people use, but maybe it's critical to your use case (like a mixed multi-monitor setup).
I would happily pay 15$/month to get a maintained Linux distro that "just works" on my machine without the Mac bloat/perkiness/weknowbetterthanyoudo. Many distros get _so_ close, but there's always an extra setup step to get basic things right. Machines-specific drivers, etc.
My brother, the least tech-oriented person you can imagine, got tired of windows updates breaking his drivers and ended up with a linux system sold by and supported by Dell. I get zero calls for help.
Other than browsing, he uses Libre Office for random documents and a photo management app I forgot. I take his experience as a very positive sign for linux.
From Dell, supported by Dell. Save your $15/month.
I bought a cheap mini pc a while back that shipped with Windows 11. I ultimately planned to use Linux, but kept the Windows install around “just in case” and went for a dual boot. In case of what? I have no idea, I haven’t had Windows in my house in many years. I think I didn’t want to give up the license, and when I looked around, I couldn’t find an easy way to save it.
I saw recall about the same time as I was thinking of using the mini pc for something else. Seeing what Windows had planned, and seeing Copilot shoehorned into my taskbar after a Windows update was enough. I blew away the install and only have Linux running now.
in theory, if it has been activated once on that machine it should install without a product key and activate based on hardware identifiers, so should be fine to nuke the partition
Not everyone sees a candy crush ad or some basic telemetry if you're not willing to pony up the $150 for the "Pro" edition as a complete moral outrage.
For those that don't the downsides of using Windows are generally less than the downsides of using Linux. For many people, the idea that their computer will be making a full recording of literally everything they do on their computer might be enough to tip the scales.
(Yes, there's always been telemetry, but we're talking the difference between some guy that sits outside your neighbourhood and writes down what time of day cars come and leave versus some guy with a video camera that follows you between your bedroom and bathroom and records while you sleep, shower and shit, but totally promises to not show anyone the recording. This is pretty obviously different.)
I say this as someone that's used Linux and BSD for over three decades... on servers. Ran Windows on my desktop (including Windows 10 for over half a decade). Every year or two I'd throw Linux on my computer and see how it did. A couple years back is when we finally got to the point where at least all the essential functionality I needed worked out of the box. The downsides of using Linux were less than that of Windows, and I immediately wiped the drive, installed Linux, and have used it exclusively since. This sort of stuff, if it couldn't be disabled, would have definitely tipped the scales in Linux's favour much sooner.
At a certain point it becomes apparent that proprietary operating system vendors don't have your best interest at heart, and the only winning move is software freedom.
A problem with AI I don't hear anybody really talking about is how it is creating a massive incentive to start gathering more and more personal information. More and more training data will be needed to make better and better AI products.
> Turns out that LLMs learn a lot better and faster from educational content as well. This is partly because the average Common Crawl article (internet pages) is not of very high value and distracts the training, packing in too much irrelevant information. The average webpage on the internet is so random and terrible it’s not even clear how prior LLMs learn anything at all.
People keep assuming that AI companies want to pipe any old junk into their models, but I'm increasingly convinced that this isn't true.
Setting aside the copyright issues--just like the AI companies already have--it would be interesting to train a model only on text books of all ages. Would it be able to tell the edits/revisions/versions that have been made over time and categorize them from new learning vs changes in political winds?
> People keep assuming that AI companies want to pipe any old junk into their models, but I'm increasingly convinced that this isn't true.
meanwhile in dimension reality: Google's AI tells people to put glue on their pizza, the only source being a single reddit comment from user "fucksmith"
Evidently they still need to experiment. They don't know if it's junk until they try to use it. I'm convinced they are going to try as much data as they can simply because they need to compete in the market.
And all the drivel that google's own search AI has been spewing comes from where? Or the incredible breadth of, often wrong, knowledge that ChatGPT can spew out in seconds, where does that comes from?
Maybe at some point they will try to create their own, very limited, "knowledge base" but then those AI assistants cease to be a jack of all trades, while still being masters of nothing.
If the data is ananomous (as it should in all telemetry), this is less of a concern. But yeah, it's definitely concerning to see more incentive for data collection beyond ad targeting.
I'm all for people switching to Linux from Windows. But doesn't Recall only work on Microsoft Copilot+ PCs? I'm assuming anyone on a normal PC doesn't have to worry about Recall. But I could be completely wrong.
Eventually more and more machines will come with the necessary chips.
And it will be more of an effort to opt out. Then only professional versions will be able to opt out, through more and more complicated pathways. Eventually it'll just be part of the OS.
Meanwhile they'll find ways to sell the side effects of the functionality to other organisations, for example to monitor employees etc, to begin with. Then to governments, why not.
Most PCs don't have the chip capable of running it though. Running it without the chip would probably slow most people's current PCs to a crawl. And if that were to ever happen, it's easy enough to roll back to an earlier update.
If only could someone switch to Linux! But there is no Linux. There is Debian, Fedora, Manjaro, Gnome, KDE, Sway, apt, yum, dnf etc. Especially when something is broken and you want to fix it that's the biggest hurdle as a new Linux user. Searching for forums, "how do I do X on Linux?" Oh I mean not Linux but Ubuntu. But MATE or LXQT? etc. It's a bottomless pit.
This fragmentation is biggest barrier against the wide adaptation of Linux. I mean Debian and Ubuntu and Arch and openSUSE and Gentoo and.
I see Linux as an idea. Or more like an umbrella of ideas that several OSes share. Which sounds good on paper but not enough for end users and for the 99.99% doesn't make any difference. At all.
The only thing I personally I recommend to friends who switch to Linux is to use an immutable distro because those are the most breakage resistant ones. Fedora Kinoite or Silverblue are nice. But then we will have Ubuntu Core Desktop soon as well. And other distros. So the wheel of fragmentation rolls forward.
If you could only go to the supermarket to buy water. There's Great Value Spring Water and Great Value Purified Water. And Fiji water, and Dasani, etc. It's a bottomless pit. Having to choose between these similar products makes it impossible for me to buy water... said noone ever.
The problem is approaching these decisions as if there were final and irreversible decisions from which one answer is right and the other one is wrong followed by eternal doom. That's not the situation at all. Most of these decisions are similar and you can change your mind at any time.
You make a false assumption that all Linux things are equivalent and provide a good baseline feature set. They are not equivalent, each one misses something that Windows provides out of the box to an extent.
Choosing a Linux distro / DE / whatever is not going a supermarket and choosing a bottle of water. It is choosing a bottling factory next to a sewer or bottled distilled water.
I feel like Mint + Cinnamon is such an easy switch from Windows, comparatively, and that Linux users should be more comfortable recommending it to newbies. For people who don't know what they're doing with Linux/unix at all, there's no point in even saying "you have all these distros, pick the one you like!" when they're mostly too advanced. It should be, "Pick Mint. If you like it, you can change later and start working on something more complex."
Now, I am sure there will be not a few disagreements that Mint should be the canonical beginner's choice. Honestly, fine, if there's a distro even more dead-simple it could be that, but bike-shedding won't help. We don't need to find the best distro for each user, we just need to give them a safe and comfortable starting point.
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Once you step out of programming or hobbyist use it is 90% Windows for the use cases one uses a full fledged computer. Yes you can replace many things with a tablet or a smartphone.
You can't replace a PC with a tablet for accounting, customer management, CAD, printing, publishing, manufacturing, simulation, advanced reporting, large document processing, centrally controlled IT and many other things.
The professional grade software you do those built on Windows, Office and Active Directory. They trust the backwards compatibility and wide range of API and integration Windows ecosystem provides.
People don't use computers because they like them. They use them because they do work for their goals.
Even for nonprofessional use case Windows still has the best hardware support. For example you cannot use old low DPI monitors with Macs anymore; the text is unreadable. Certain audio workstations doesn't work with ARM chips.
Lets talk reality. More and more applications users access live in a browser.. you technically could run the entire company on dumb terminals if you were so inclined ( and jobs were sufficiently.. in dire of automation, but for one reason or another human is doing those ). Windows is not needed for that.
You could argue banking/finance with excel ( and there are some neat things Office introduced with 365 ), which is presumably why that sector is going to be locked in for a while, but then.. my last class at university, all kids were running google docs and they will be making decisions one day. I am not sure that bodes well for MS/Office/Windows.
As for "accounting, customer management, CAD, printing, publishing, manufacturing, simulation, advanced reporting, large document processing, centrally controlled IT", you might be right, but somehow I doubt it. There is nothing magical about Windows. It is currently held by inertia and contracts, but even inertia ends eventually.
Give some market demand, they could switch back and support Linux
He will waste hours, maybe days learning about different distributions, window managers, packaging, etc. This is true even for experienced professionals. It's demotivating IMHO.
There's a book named "The Paradox of Choice", it gives a good psychological overview of this topic. No distribution is ready to compete against Windows
Corporate use looks nothing like that. I was actually working in an accounting firm that tried to move people over to google sheets and docs. Took about a week for people to realise the sheets plan is utterly idiotic.
Docs lasted about a month before even the “thought leaders” in charge of pushing the initiative went quiet.
For casual use sure, but it’s no more replacing office than ms paint is replacing photoshop.
For each one of those examples there's already a superior Linux based choice.
Try finding alternatives to Excel with its entire feature set (no cheating all SQL db integration and VBA equivalent scripting, plugin APIs should be there), PowerPoint with all the integration with other Office, Solidworks with its entire feature set, Altium with its entire feature set, Siemens NX, Catia, SAP, Ansys, Active Directory, Adobe Creative Suite or Affinity or CorelDRAW, Cubase, Sibelius just a start. And the software you mention has to have succesful companies behind them and has to be used widely.
No.
1. Don’t turn recall on
2. Switch to Mac
Jumping straight to the Linux Desktop deep end after using Windows for years is an unlikely change path for most. These arguments ignore the fact that most Windows users have a lot of Windows-specific apps that they use, such as games.
I think the real audience for these articles isn’t Windows users at all. It’s for Linux users to pay themselves on the back for not using Windows.
When I try to use a Mac, everything is just ... different. CMD instead of Ctrl, buttons on the other side of windows, inconsistent maximize logic between programs, whatever Finder is supposed to be doing with folder navigation. It's certainly learnable with effort, and I can move around the OS competently now with some practice, but it's just unpleasant enough that I'd rather not use it as my daily driver.
> I can hop between Linux (KDE, Gnome, whatever)
If you’ve been using Linux long enough to be familiar with KDE and Gnome and even know the difference between them, you’re very firmly a Linux enthusiast user. It’s easy to forget that the average computer user isn’t really interested in the details of their window management. They want the OS to get out of the way and support them, not be something they’re actively invested in.
I think nowadays you would have a much worse experience switching from windows to mac, as you said, the user wants their apps and games to carry over, but you are actually going to have a much better time getting those to carry over to linux. Specially regarding games, just the fact that Steam runs almost any Windows game effortlessly on linux is a big deal. Meanwhile, Apple has made sure to burn all the bridges they could with game developers and game compatibility in the last decade or so.
I have Mac, Windows, and Linux machines that I use for different purposes. None of them has been perfect, but the amount of time I’ve lost fighting driver issues, weird upgrade quirks, software incompatibility problems, and other little loose ends over the users has been a magnitude worse on the Linux machines than anything else. In the moment it doesn’t really feel like much because it’s similar to daily work with Linux servers, but looking back it’s just so much more predictable to have basic things working on Mac or Windows than on Linux.
I do agree that Recall isn't the reason to switch though. The abuse Microsoft has put their users through the last few years has been unimaginable, to the point where switching to anything will feel liberating. Even Linux desktop.
As if many Windows games don't work on Linux via proton, to the point that Valve's Steam Deck runs on Linux and is "good enough" most of the time. Compatibility purely depends on the game and more often than not incompatibilities are caused by anti-cheat mechanisms.
And about jumping to Linux: we had Windows computers in my family, originally with Windows 7, then upgraded to Windows 8.1, and once 8.1 was EOL, they were reinstalled with Linux (KDE as desktop environment). Since these computers were mainly used for email, web browsing, and some basic "office activities" like writing a simple document occasionally, there was exactly no issue with it. KDE itself is also similar enough to a Windows desktop that it wasn't hard for anyone to learn the few relevant things that are different. I'd be quite surprised if this was different for the majority of current Windows users.
But those multiplayer online games are the most popular games on the planet. It's another topic of discussion but people want to play them
This is kind of an outdated argument and nearly a solved problem - the majority of Steam's library can be run near-effortlessly on Linux today. I'd expect a large portion of Windows PC gamers to be aware of that, too, at least in the US. I don't really know anyone who's tied to any Windows-specific apps that aren't games, either.
I no longer buy this argument at all. Between the work Steam put into Proton, this is had been largely a non-issue. About the only game I needed to use VM for was Fallout 3 ( I didn't feel like messing with it for more than 15 minutes ). There are some things Windows is still good for, but that list is growing shorter.
<< I think the real audience for these articles isn’t Windows users at all. It’s for Linux users to pay themselves on the back for not using Windows.
The intended audience is the people, who most need to hear it, because they do not realize there are options other than OS1 or OS2. And that it is not nearly as hard as it was only a decade ago.
Windows desktop users are all over the planet. Only a small percent of them could ever afford this.
It's on by default if you have the right (wrong) hardware as I understand it.
Linux is great, love it on the server, but it's never a "just works" experience on any modern laptop type hardware.
It's doable, but it doesn't "just work".
My brother, the least tech-oriented person you can imagine, got tired of windows updates breaking his drivers and ended up with a linux system sold by and supported by Dell. I get zero calls for help.
Other than browsing, he uses Libre Office for random documents and a photo management app I forgot. I take his experience as a very positive sign for linux.
From Dell, supported by Dell. Save your $15/month.
I saw recall about the same time as I was thinking of using the mini pc for something else. Seeing what Windows had planned, and seeing Copilot shoehorned into my taskbar after a Windows update was enough. I blew away the install and only have Linux running now.
For those that don't the downsides of using Windows are generally less than the downsides of using Linux. For many people, the idea that their computer will be making a full recording of literally everything they do on their computer might be enough to tip the scales.
(Yes, there's always been telemetry, but we're talking the difference between some guy that sits outside your neighbourhood and writes down what time of day cars come and leave versus some guy with a video camera that follows you between your bedroom and bathroom and records while you sleep, shower and shit, but totally promises to not show anyone the recording. This is pretty obviously different.)
I say this as someone that's used Linux and BSD for over three decades... on servers. Ran Windows on my desktop (including Windows 10 for over half a decade). Every year or two I'd throw Linux on my computer and see how it did. A couple years back is when we finally got to the point where at least all the essential functionality I needed worked out of the box. The downsides of using Linux were less than that of Windows, and I immediately wiped the drive, installed Linux, and have used it exclusively since. This sort of stuff, if it couldn't be disabled, would have definitely tipped the scales in Linux's favour much sooner.
To be fair, it really is scores and scores of jabs to avoid in Windows - with more added bi-weekly. Today I had to counter (for many users)
1) the orange notify dot (start menu->user) trying to lure users into a non-consensual Microsoft account setup and
2) the clickable suggestions on the lock screen, carefully positioned in the click-space where the password box will be.
It's like MS found a copy of Creepy Uncle For Dummies and hovered for hours over every page.
Deleted Comment
At a certain point it becomes apparent that proprietary operating system vendors don't have your best interest at heart, and the only winning move is software freedom.
> Turns out that LLMs learn a lot better and faster from educational content as well. This is partly because the average Common Crawl article (internet pages) is not of very high value and distracts the training, packing in too much irrelevant information. The average webpage on the internet is so random and terrible it’s not even clear how prior LLMs learn anything at all.
People keep assuming that AI companies want to pipe any old junk into their models, but I'm increasingly convinced that this isn't true.
meanwhile in dimension reality: Google's AI tells people to put glue on their pizza, the only source being a single reddit comment from user "fucksmith"
Maybe at some point they will try to create their own, very limited, "knowledge base" but then those AI assistants cease to be a jack of all trades, while still being masters of nothing.
Now it's those machines only, and opt-out.
Eventually more and more machines will come with the necessary chips.
And it will be more of an effort to opt out. Then only professional versions will be able to opt out, through more and more complicated pathways. Eventually it'll just be part of the OS.
Meanwhile they'll find ways to sell the side effects of the functionality to other organisations, for example to monitor employees etc, to begin with. Then to governments, why not.
This fragmentation is biggest barrier against the wide adaptation of Linux. I mean Debian and Ubuntu and Arch and openSUSE and Gentoo and.
I see Linux as an idea. Or more like an umbrella of ideas that several OSes share. Which sounds good on paper but not enough for end users and for the 99.99% doesn't make any difference. At all.
The only thing I personally I recommend to friends who switch to Linux is to use an immutable distro because those are the most breakage resistant ones. Fedora Kinoite or Silverblue are nice. But then we will have Ubuntu Core Desktop soon as well. And other distros. So the wheel of fragmentation rolls forward.
The problem is approaching these decisions as if there were final and irreversible decisions from which one answer is right and the other one is wrong followed by eternal doom. That's not the situation at all. Most of these decisions are similar and you can change your mind at any time.
Choosing a Linux distro / DE / whatever is not going a supermarket and choosing a bottle of water. It is choosing a bottling factory next to a sewer or bottled distilled water.
Now, I am sure there will be not a few disagreements that Mint should be the canonical beginner's choice. Honestly, fine, if there's a distro even more dead-simple it could be that, but bike-shedding won't help. We don't need to find the best distro for each user, we just need to give them a safe and comfortable starting point.