Nowadays Windows is filled with adware and is fairly slow, but it wasn’t always like this. Was there a particular time where a change occurred?
Nowadays Windows is filled with adware and is fairly slow, but it wasn’t always like this. Was there a particular time where a change occurred?
Windows runs software written for my company in 2005 without any real issues. It is backwards compatible for 25 years, it destroys any other OS in compatibility only and the actual customer of Windows, businesses, value that more than anything else.
That’s not the question though, they may have backwards compatibility as a sacred cow, but the theme of their changes as of 8 and newer has broadly been more about trying to force other Microsoft agendas rather than trying to just make a better product.
Though I have had some older titles that work better with wine, or even older where I need dosbox to run it.
You are still talking about video games, their primary consumer are large companies with an Microsoft Enterprise Agreement. With this you can be guaranteed that your SQL2005 app that runs your multi million dollar revenue membership organization or financial research company can keep making money without too much investment or getting walled in by one or two linux specialists with systems no one else understands. You can keep legacy windows programs running on Server 2022 with people who are just over breathing in their level of competency.
On the usability side for big companies windows has gotten way easier to use. Windows 10/11 introduces the CSP or “Configuration Service Provider” (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/mdm/) model of MDM (mobile device management) which enables them to move from really clunky 2000s era technology called System Center and Active Directory (LDAP directory + local DNS server) to a SAAS management model bundled with Microsoft 365 (the most profitable product at Microsoft, they count 365 consumption in their Azure revenue stream when reporting to investors). If your computer is intune managed and signed into with an Entra (the Microsoft SAAS identity provider) you get windows with no ads, no games or bloat ware and you can get to making boss money ASAP.
You’re the consumer which likely doesn’t want to upgrade or spend money so a huge liability and part of an old strategy of theirs to lock people in ath ome so they were trained for the office, they moved to giving out subscriptions to Microsoft 365 (bundled with your Minecraft account to hook you young) and getting you dependent on their cloud services. If you’re talking about Windows for video games, Microsoft wants you to buy an XBox. If you aren’t going to buy an XBox they want to make sure you subscribe to them monthly from Playstation then.
On the linux side there is no alternatives for Active Directory or Intune and SCCM. Companies I’ve worked for with significant unix and linux infrastructure still ran Active Directory for the user accounts. This is boring tech no one cares about and we’ll never get an open source community to create and maintain it because I only deal with this for my boss and when I come home I use linux on my home computer too.