Please, i never once paid for windows either.
You paid the markup when buying hardware with OEM license though.
Not if I’ve never bought a prebuilt PC.
Not even a laptop?
system76 let’s go
Nope. Never bothered with a laptop until work provided me with one.
Cant say for them, but I’ve never owned a laptop until about 6 months ago, and thats used enterprise hardware off ebay.
What did you get? I’m interested but not really sure what to look for in that niche
HP zbook 17 G6. Big, thiccc, can take a 2.5 inch drive AND a slim disk drive (but it might be hard to find the front/bezel piece to use one properly), and 2/3 m.2 slots (i think sata might be disabled if i use one?)
No soldered ram BS, and I’ve got an 8c/16t xeon. I spent about $300. G6 and G5 only difference is the processor IIRC
You only need laptops if you actually leave your home.
Probably depends on the store, but the 2 times I bought a laptop in my life, both stores had a No OS option in the drop-down, which brought the price down. (One actually came with no OS, the other came with FreeDOS IIRC for some reason)
You’re forgetting piracy. I didn’t buy any parts with OEM licenses. Granted I went grey market for my Windows 10 so I paid someone like $20.
At least nowadays it’s so much easier to find FreeDOS laptops. I remember that it was not a thing here 20 years ago, and Windows was included in the warranty so you couldn’t remove it for at least 2 years (if you care about warranty).
Nah, not for me. I have only built my own PC’s since 2006. If i had a laptop (and a few surfaces) it was through work.
I know all about the OEM license thats now hardcoded on the board due to my job. Our company was buying devices with windows, essentially paying more per device, then imaging them with our image with an enterprise license…
Aye, I did buy a prebuilt once in 2004.
Damn, Microslop’s got you by the balls.
I wish I didn’t have to pay that either. I think I did have to pay it on my Laptop, which is dumb since I ultimately wiped it and used something free (debian if you’re wondering).
Yes, but no. They know you’ll pay (e.g.) $700 for a PC. If windows were free, you’d still be paying $700. It would just go to a different billionaire.
I did and it was every bit as degrading as you might imagine.
Same… Multiple times.
Eh, whatever floats your boat, I say, no kink shaming
It didn’t float my boat.
I paid for a ticket to the Windows 7 launch event back in the days. Cost a few euros, in return I got a day of talks, networking, a laptop bag full of sweets and a retail copy of Windows 7 Ultimate. The serial also worked for Windows 10 and 11, so I’d say that was a pretty sweet deal. I honestly cannot say if that technically counts as having paid for Windows though.
Well, Microsoft didn’t offer it to you freely…
Heh. Paid for Win 7. Still not ashamed. Best system I had, even if it had it’s weird stuff. And it’s licence carried on to Win 10 and prolly 11. Cannot say with 11 as I am highly uninterested in it xD
Mac OS has been free since the 2000s, but I hadn’t paid for it before then either. All the way back to system 7.
I paid for windows 10. Still have the install disk and everything, got it at Fry’s RIP.
It’s a trap. Once you accept linux, you will become a linux person. At every technical issue your friends and family encounter, you’ll say stuff like “have you tried switching to linux?”
It’s too late…
“Installing Arch is really easy these days!”
I don’t think I have anyone in my family that I hate quite that much.
It actually is now. Both EndeavourOS and CachyOs have installers that set a good baseline to build off of.
I always say: Its Windows, I have no clue how that might work.
Not only free, but private and secure. Won’t even spy on you, and if it tries you can just tell it no and it listens!
Fuck, I love Linux.
The cost is the time you will spend learning how to use it and debug issues (mostly copying and pasting strange commands from strangers on old forum posts)
You just summarised the pain I have with troubleshooting Linux. As a pleb, I am happy with Bazzite being user friendly.
This is why I appreciate immutable distros so much. Sure, you can’t really do super sick stuff by tinkering with system files or modify some system components to make it your dream system, but the average user really doesn’t need that. In most use cases, the flatpak version of a software will just run fine, sometimes even better than the standalone version due to certain outdated dependencies being hard to acquire/install that the Flatpak just integrates. Sure, Flatpak also has issues, but for the most part it works for the end user.
Or using LLMs. For common problems they give good answers. But for niche problems one should double check what the proposed commands actually do.
I asked her for one desktop environment from her golden head. She gave me a handful.
I encased it in a dot file and enshrined it in my git, to be handed down to all my descendants (People that say hey cool desktop may I have your dotfiles?)
Man I’m at the point where I would like to pay for a Linux distribution(ofc. under the assumption that source remains open) if that meant that someone was responsible for stuff working reliable. I hate my headphones not connecting via Bluetooth. I would like a consumer ready distribution and don’t want fiddle around with problems potentially everybody has to solve. Why do there have to 10000+ different package managers with 10000 different incomplete package sources?
I’m no expert, but I believe there are some distros with paid support (intended for corporate clients).
Yeah, SUSE, REL, Ubuntu have paid support. SUSE started as a service support company before spinning their own.
There are paid subscriptions with support. You could also test out other distros, the currated nature of some distros means a problem in one doesn’t show up in another.
I.e. My wife’s laptop is a samsung from 2010. Debian derivatives won’t run because of a bios bug that halts the system, or even halts install. Fedora or SUSE run fine, it shows the bug and works around it.
Ubuntu and fedora both have that I think
To be honest: Windows has been free (for home users) for a while now. To be brutally honest: Most of the users who’ve abandoned Microslop did so with free plugged into the value proposition.
Free as in freedom AND beer :)
Gotta love a free product that also does not suck.
If something is free, then you’re either the product, or the beta tester. But since paid software is getting worse and worse, being the beta tester is a good alternative.
And somehow in Windows they managed to make people pay for it and be the product.
All while technically selling alpha versions…
In the case of Linux, especially the ones without a business built around them (e.g. Debian), they’re more like mutual aid. They’re not looking to sell it or exfiltrate your data in the future, after the “beta.”
Absolutely brilliant. 👍
Thanks! I assumed there would be plenty of community crossover to appreciate it.
Linux is like the Star Citizen of operating systems: There are people who see the potential and trust things will be fixed. And there’s the people who have been around for a while.
you ignore tonnes of happy users whose app ecosystems worked day-1 on linux at parity or even better than windows.
Had to zoom in, thought it was a Buzz Ball.
Massgrave says it’s actually $Free.99
I did pay 10$ for a windows 11 key.
