Have you used a modern version of Linux or Windows? You can basically use most Linuxes like Android with a guide app store, and there’s almost no way to break it. Windows also will still let you be admin and let you break it. Neither is particularly easy to break anymore.
It’s still something that can happen. I’ve run into an issue trying to install Ubuntu onto a PC which worked fine on the live USB but installed the incorrect Nvidia driver and ended up failing to boot. Took me a whole day, even as a software engineer, to fix it and even then, that’s just to get it to display, I had to do a lot more digging to even get CUDA to run on it since I was still using an incorrect driver. I’m fine with that but I can’t imagine most people are.
Even if Windows doesn’t get the best driver for the job, more often than not it will still somewhat function for the hardware that most people use.
It’s a lot better than it used to be but there’s still issues here and there. For the average user, better the devil you know than the one you don’t.
jmp242@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Well it’s not like Windows hasn’t bricked some pcs with their driver updates. It does just happen sometimes. The argument I’m making is if I went to Burger King and every time I went I was disappointed in the food quality, price and speed of service I would eventually risk Wendys.
Heck my family was GM but after years of breakdowns and getting stranded by 3 different GM cars and weird / bad performance in a 4th, we changed car manufacturers.
Sometimes you ought to give up on the Devil you know if it’s costing you too much money and time.
On an individual level, having a computer is better than not having one. Even if you need a different OS.
On a societal level, we should want to limit both ewaste and insecure OSs. We could legislate MS and other vendors not to do what Microsoft is doing here. But we probably don’t want to legislate updates for 20 years or something. (maybe we do IDK). The more likely thing is kicking known EOL OSs off the internet, but then we’re back to ewaste.
pycorax@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I get your analogy but it’s a way larger jump going from Windows to Linux versus McDonald’s to Linux. To bring it back to what we were talking about, I think it’s more that the switch might end up costing more money and time because realistically, most people are gonna disregard the EOL status because “it still works and I can still use it”. Those who do switch are probably those who require or want an upgrade of some form.