QB64 3.10.0 can't be copied.

[TerryRitchie]

@TerryRitchie -  With the way Windows is going (spyware, crapware, not owning your OS any longer) I imagine many more will make the switch to Linux in the future.

No! An old dream of the Linux Community.

I do not understand how someone like you can turn an operating system into an ideology. Linux, Windows & Co are operating systems, nothing more. Operating systems only!

Windows is much more than an operating system now. It has become a tool to track and control the user according to Microsoft's will. With each version of Windows more functionality is removed from the user's control. I don't want the telemetry, can it be removed, no. The addition of an LLM is coming (what the media calls "AI"), will I be able to remove it, no. Remove the app store, no. I don't want Edge, too bad. Control panel functions strewn out all over the place. Ads, yep you're going to see them. The list of negatives literally could go on and fill a few pages.

Windows is trying to be a phone OS on a desktop. No thank you.

Now I realize I can use the LTSC version to get around a lot of this crap but seriously, $300!?

My number one biggest issue is the user has become a Beta tester. The updates are buggy and the user pays the price. Features can be removed and modified at Microsoft's will and you will like it.

Someone like me has been using computers since 1980. I know what makes an operating system good versus one that is crap. Windows 8.1 and above is definite crap and it's only getting worse. And here is Microsoft's end goal: eventually (Windows 13,14,..?) you won't even have the OS installed locally on your system. Your computer will need to act as a dumb terminal to log into "your" OS on Microsoft's cloud. Now you have lost complete control, live with it. No Internet access because your ISP is down, sucks to be you.

More people will move to Linux, not for an ideology, but simply because you'll have choices as a user. Microsoft hates when users want a choice.

[NakedApe]

There's another OS choice too besides Linux, Terry, one based on good old Unix. Not to be an Apple evangelist, but there's a LOT less bloat and crap on a Mac, just sayin. I grew up on PCs, got my first Treasure Chest 386 in 1991 and loved all it could do, but the later versions of Windows turned me off so much that I bought an iMac in '04 and have never looked back. QB64PE works great on MacOS and with a740g adding fixes and improvements all the time I'm a happy camper. I recently bought a refurbed Mac Mini M2 for ~$500 and the thing just flies... fwiw.

[Kernelpanic]

More people will move to Linux, not for an ideology, but simply because you'll have choices as a user. Microsoft hates when users want a choice.

Amen!
It's a pity about your abilities.

[TerryRitchie]

There's another OS choice too besides Linux, Terry, one based on good old Unix. Not to be an Apple evangelist, but there's a LOT less bloat and crap on a Mac, just sayin. I grew up on PCs, got my first Treasure Chest 386 in 1991 and loved all it could do, but the later versions of Windows turned me off so much that I bought an iMac in '04 and have never looked back. QB64PE works great on MacOS and with a740g adding fixes and improvements all the time I'm a happy camper. I recently bought a refurbed Mac Mini M2 for ~$500 and the thing just flies... fwiw.

Apple is too expensive and customer unfriendly for my tastes.

---

More people will move to Linux, not for an ideology, but simply because you'll have choices as a user. Microsoft hates when users want a choice.

Amen!
It's a pity about your abilities.

I don't know what you mean by this?

[Kernelpanic]

I don't know what you mean by this?

In your posts and in your tutorials you show what you can do. And now I don't understand your answer.

So, we do not us understand.

[TerryRitchie]

I don't know what you mean by this?

In your posts and in your tutorials you show what you can do. And now I don't understand your answer.

So, we do not us understand.

Could I take Windows 11 and bend it to my will? Absolutely. However, tracking down registry hacks and 3rd party software tools is something I don't want to do or shouldn't need to do. Furthermore, Microsoft has shown again and again that they will actively attack these hacks with their forced updates, changing settings and removing functionality the hacks provided. Then it's another game of whack-a-mole to get these changes back, until the next forced update. No thank you. Microsoft simply does not want you to have a choice, it's their way or the highway. Windows in a nutshell has become hostile to the user.

Furthermore, knowing that Windows will eventually become SaaS and monthly/yearly subscription fees will become the norm, is another reason to make the change to Linux now. Microsoft views the user as a tool to squeeze money out of. SaaS is a wet dream they simply can't resist. Nadella is so jealous of Apple's walled garden he is willing to do whatever it takes to get Microsoft to that point. There's a problem with that thinking though, Apple has carefully built a fan base over the years, a cult if you will, while Microsoft could never hope to achieve that.

The image below is my Windows 7 desktop. Clean, concise, to the point, and most important my choice in how it looks. No popups, banners, side trays, ads, and a proper start button on a proper taskbar.  Could I emulate this in Window 11. Sure, again using 3rd party tools and hacks that are not guaranteed to work for very long. I don't want to fight my operating system, I want to use it.

Can I get this functionality and look/feel with Linux. You betcha, fairly easily in fact.

[bert22306]

"Furthermore, knowing that Windows will eventually become SaaS and monthly/yearly subscription fees will become the norm, is another reason to make the change to Linux now."

Best I can tell, reading the speculation, while this much could happen, a cloud-based Windows appears not to be imminent. It's simply not competitive, for too many people in the world, to attempt a cloud-based OS implementation. Even those who have good broadband, say over 100 Mb/s, would notice unacceptable performance.

On the WaaS model, I'd say that such a change would have been more likely had the Windows 10 model remained in effect. Where you'd eventually have to pay subscription fees for updates. If MS is instead moving to new versions of Windows every so often, they could just go back to charging for the upgrade, as they used to do.

Time will tell.

Meanwhile, for home use, I've been considering Office Libre, as opposed to MS Office 365. I see that some governments around the world have already made that move. Ain't competition great?

[JRace]

@TerryRitchie : are you a psychic channeling me, or are my internal rants forceful enough to be felt by other people?

Anyway....

I doubt full-on cloud-based Windows is in the current version of Microsoft's Great Plan, but new Windows versions allow MS to shift Windows' infrastructure in the direction they want it to go.

I think Microsoft is exploring Saas & WaaS to see how far they can go and how much money they can squeeze out of users.  Losing some users will be acceptable to them if they get enough money out of those who remain.  The majority of corporate users will remain and continue to support MS, because Windows works for them and they can justify the cost.

MS has had many long-term plans over the years, which have often changed dramatically, so there are many factors that could prevent a cloud-based walled-garden Windows.

For years now MS has been heading in a direction I do not like, and Windows 11 is my deciding factor.  I wouldn't put Windows 11 on my machine if they were giving it away.

(FWIW: Out of my 10 or so various PCs, laptops, and netbooks, I own exactly ONE Windows 10 machine.  It's a super-lightweight 2-in-1 laptop/tablet combo that I bought and tolerated because I needed a portable PC with a long battery life for a contract job.  I tolerated that POS machine with POS operating system only as long as the job lasted and haven't touched it in the two years since.)

As I type this on my Windows 7 Pro desktop, my browser complains that I am running an old, deprecated OS.  It won't be complaining too much longer, as my plans are to upgrade the RAM and HD in this workhorse then switch to Linux, with Wine, ReactOS, and maybe one or two older versions of Windows on VMs for when I need them.

I will miss some Windows-only games for a while if they don't run on Wine, but I will not miss Windows.

[SMcNeill]

Honestly, I've always just wondered where all the hate comes from for Windows.  I haven't actually had an unstable version of windows since probably Vista left the market.  I don't get those blue screens of death.  Don't have error messages popping up everytime I turn around.  I simply sit down and it's working.  (As I use my PCs for web serving purposes too a lot of times, I'm not in the habit of every turning them off.  Mine tend to be on 24/7/365 usually.)

Are there things that annoy me with Windows out of the box?  Sure there are!  I, for one, personally *hate* the bleeping search indexing options.  I'm a writer and as such, my drives are full of various documents and text files.  I'm also a book collector, and my drives are full of about 6 to 8 TB (yes, TB, not GB) of ebooks in various formats.  And yet, Windows wants to scan all those, build a dictionary from them, and then point an index to any word that appears in those books so that when I search for "dragon", it can tell me how many documents have "dragon" in them.

(Hint:  I'm an avid reader of fantasy and a game master/player of Dungeons and Dragons, so you can just imagine how many that is!!)

So Windows starts up...  indexing.... indexing...indexing...indexing...indexing... endlessly indexing.... with at least 1 whole core running at 99.9875% power, heating the PC/laptop and making the internal fans sound like an airplane engine....

/UGGHHH!!

But, I can disable that from the services menu, set it to never run again,  and generally not be bothered by it.

---

Folks come in here all the time and post things like, "My PC keeps flagging this as a virus!"   Can't say I've ever had Window's Defender flag anything.  As far as I know, I don't have a single file or folder blocked from virus checking, and yet I never have a problem with things compiling and running.

Never any firewall issues.  Even if I write a program that needs internet connectivity, it just pops up a permission box on start-up and then I'm good to go forever more.

My videos play.  Same with sound.  They stream to my TV, my iPad, and share across various other devices and PCs easily.  

QB64 itself works with zero issues with Windows.  In fact, it works BETTER with Windows, as there's a whole list of keywords and such that aren't supported elsewhere, but as far as my memory recalls, I don't think there's a single keyword that works elsewhere that doesn't also work on Windows.

Windows APIs are nice.  They're all well documented and easy to interface with and work with.  I don't think I've ever heard anyone say such a thing about Linux.  (X11 anyone?  )

And, at the end of the day, Windows is still Windows.  An EXE I compile on a Win 7 machine is going to work on a Win 8 machine, on a Win 10 machine, on a Win 11 machine, and -- I'm guessing here, but I honestly think so -- on a Win 12 machine.  Can the same be said for Linux?  If you compile an executable today, and upgrade your kernal/OS tomorrow, will it still run or will you have to recompile that program once again?  

And my biggest problem is that *There is truly NO such thing as Linux!*  It's a blanket term, like car.  You truly don't buy a car.  You buy a Ford, or Chevy, or Suburu, or Hyundai, or whatever flavor you buy.  Parts from one won't work on parts from another.  You can't compile on Mint and expect it to work on RedHat, though both are "Linux systems".  Heck, you can't even guarantee that a program you compiled on Mint will work on another PC running Mint.  You might have Mint-Gnome-KDE, while the other PC has Mint-ChickenLittle-McD...

---

And folks talk about windows being a paid service, but I just don't see that either.  The only thing I pay MS for is a yearly subscription to MS Office -- $69 a year, and that gives me all the office applicates up to date an in their latest versions.

We have folks who are willingly paying $10 a month to our Patreon -- $120 a year -- just for QB64PE!  MS Office does a lot more than what we do  -- (At least, for me, it does.  I'd be utterly lost without Word, Excel, and Access.) -- and it's half the price that some folks are paying to help keep us up and going.

---

TLDR: There may be folks who will up the ghost and finally abandon Windows, but I personally can't see Steve ever doing so.  I imagine 50 years from now, when I'm an old and decrepit man of 100, I'll still be running their stuff and wondering just what the heck it is about them that folks always act like they're the devil. 

[Kernelpanic]

Honestly, I've always just wondered where all the hate comes from for Windows.

Ideology has always been involved with Linux and Apple. Especially with Linux, right from the start it was the fight of the open source scene (intention: social) against the dark monopoly capital a la Microsoft. A good article about this from 2004, in German: Luftbuchungen der freien Softwareszene

Linux was never just an operating system, but a religion, a congregation of faith. Hellfire was wished on apostates and heretics (Windows users). My God Walther, there were wild verbal battles in the forums back then.  Always sock it to 'em.

All of the former major Linux forums (in this country) are either practically dead or have been discontinued completely, e.g. ProLinux. Linux on the desktop is dead, even though there will still be people using it on the desktop for a long time, but there is always ideology in the background.
For me, Linux, FreeBSD, Windows were always just what they are: operating systems. Not more!

I started with MS-DOS 3.1, and after about three weeks I have splited the 20MB hard drive into: C:\ and an extended partition with 2 logical drives D:\ and E:\. The absolutely first-class manuals from MS that were included at the time helped me.

I have never had any crashes in Windows 3.1 or higher that would have been to the operating system, it was always my experiments. However, due to the division of my hard drives, this was never a real problem, as since then my data has generally not been on C:\.

To Linux. From SuSE 4.3 (1996) to 11.2, I always had Linux as a second system on my computer. The systems were started first via Lilo and then via Grub. The first KDE that was actually usable was KDE 2.2.2, and the best I knew of was KDE 3.10/15(?).
SuSE was my favorite distro, it was always there on a second hard drive since 4.3. But since there was still space there, I also tried out others: Mandrake, Debian, Kanotix and also FreeBSD.

In summary: I had have repeatedly had problems with SuSE Linux for about 14 years that I never had with Windows. It was nice. And I liked experimenting, but then I had enough. After SuSE 11.2, I only installed SuSE twice in a VM, more for nostalgic reasons than useful ones.

My first screeshot from Linux



My last screeshot from Linux



And from the time of the forum fights