Microsoft hints that Windows 11 could become a fully cloud-based subscription service

[HardReset]

Good to know, thanks. Those phone calls are hell on earth.

There's loader for that, basically a rootkit (and it loads before OS starts) but it works.

 

[toooooot]

I hate office 365. And I am very angry to see people who use it when they could save like 50%.
It only works for people who change their laptops every year. A lot of people I see do not.
You can buy it once and forget you need to pay monthly. And in 2 years non subscription version will be almost twice cheaper.
Same goes for OS. It is more expensive even when it seems so cheap at first.
There are millions of people living paycheck to paycheck, and the same people accumulate 10-20 subscription services. And then in times of financial troubles, not only they do not have money to fix their problems, but they can also no longer afford things they actually need.
Cloud means you have no control and no rights. Cloud means you will not be able to stop without
a painful break up and replacement.

 

[scavengerspc]

Certainly going to piss some people off.
But on the upside, they can just quit using Windows.

What I'm curious about is my business computers. I already paid for every copy of 11 and
don't expect to be asked to pay again.

 

[p51d007]

Expect a decline in PC and rise in Mac.

You don't think Apple would do this, if their forecasts experts say they could make a ton of money?
Subscriptions, in a weird sort of way, are better for companies than pushing out a new software every
year or two. With the old model, you get a boost of revenue, then pretty much goes away, until the
next new software comes along.
With a subscription based software, you have a "guaranteed" revenue stream the entire year.

 

[p51d007]

You don't think Apple would do this, if their forecasts experts say they could make a ton of money?
Subscriptions, in a weird sort of way, are better for companies than pushing out a new software every
year or two. With the old model, you get a boost of revenue, then pretty much goes away, until the
next new software comes along.
With a subscription based software, you have a "guaranteed" revenue stream the entire year.

You don't think Apple would do this, if their forecasts experts say they could make a ton of money?
Subscriptions, in a weird sort of way, are better for companies than pushing out a new software every
year or two. With the old model, you get a boost of revenue, then pretty much goes away, until the
next new software comes along.
With a subscription based software, you have a "guaranteed" revenue stream the entire year.

Not to mention you will OWN nothing...and like it. /s

 

[p51d007]

This is what Adobe has been doing with Photoshop for several years now.

"Photoshop Elements", is the last free standing program they offer at present. At retail it's a hundred bucks. Photoshop proper is $120. so what the hell, right?

Well, the $100.00 you can wipe off your credit card at the next statement, but a subscription goes on forever. Then there's all the sales hype I imagine you'll have to endure while logged in on Photoshop. I won't even run Elements on a machine while it's connected to the web.

For me, the 10 buck or so per month for Photoshop is worth it. Instead of waiting for a new version to come along, update costing 100-200 bucks, they push out updates and NEW features directly.
Their new "generative fill" is pretty cool and saves a lot of time. Playing around with it, I drew a box, said generate a blue car. Gave me 3 options, or I could generate more. Then I drew an oval below the car, typed in reflective water. It NAILED it. The reflection, angle of the sun shadows everything was pretty much spot
on. This would take me hours to do by hand.

 

[mcnabney]

For me, the 10 buck or so per month for Photoshop is worth it. Instead of waiting for a new version to come along, update costing 100-200 bucks, they push out updates and NEW features directly.
Their new "generative fill" is pretty cool and saves a lot of time. Playing around with it, I drew a box, said generate a blue car. Gave me 3 options, or I could generate more. Then I drew an oval below the car, typed in reflective water. It NAILED it. The reflection, angle of the sun shadows everything was pretty much spot
on. This would take me hours to do by hand.

And all they have to do is process written or spoken requests and your role won't even be necessary.

Be careful how easy you want things.

 

[Demote6060]

What distro/software are you using?
Do you install from win-x86 sources or ?
What about cracked games?

I currently use Nobara, which is gaming focused. I have other devices that use ChimeraOS and SteamOS. Im mostly installing games from steam, but I have had good luck with epic/gog through heroic games launcher and battle.net through lutris and bottles. The only launcher that has given me a ton of grief is the ea launcher.

I don't play cracked games, so I do not have any experience trying them. ROMs for older systems work great in mulators though.

 

[Nintenboy01]

Valve had the right idea not using Windows on the Steam Deck

 

[Alfonso Maruccia]

The future... is a nightmare.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

I guess you're going to be stuck when you buy a new PC in the future. But then cloud service also lessens software piracy too.

I dunno, Adobe software is still widely pirated and it went subscription based 10 years ago. Despite this they are having record profits, so maybe it won't matter to M$ when they see the profits soar. Still, I will only buy a one time purchase version of Windows. I will never buy into cloud based insecure BS. Linux or MacOS for me if this is true.

 

[captaincranky]

What I'm curious about is my business computers. I already paid for every copy of 11 and
don't expect to be asked to pay again.

Now, now, don't get your knickers in a twist. The worst that could happen with W 11, is to have a concomitant cloud offering..

Now, Windows 12 is quite a different story. Since they're lobbying / petitioning the FTC now, a subscription Windows has to be at least one generation away.

But when 12 happens, it will definitely have AI fused into it, and all they have to do is raise the system requirements so high** as to be ridiculous, then state, "Windows system requirements are beyond the capability of any home platform, and therefore it must be run on M$' servers.". Then comes the long winded sales pitch, about how that it will "enrich you life immeasurably, and enable productivity and entertainment possibilities far beyond the capability of any home machine." Then, finish off with,"this is by far and away, the best version of Windows ever."

Throw in DX-14, and they gotcha. Time to snap the line, set the hook, and reel you in. March onward all ye power users, into the abyss.

** "To enable all of Windows AI capability, a minimum of a GTX 5070 graphics will be required". (And just think what the price of those would be if they become mandatory). "All mighty cloud, I hear and obey."..

 

[Julnor]

I currently use Nobara, which is gaming focused. I have other devices that use ChimeraOS and SteamOS. Im mostly installing games from steam, but I have had good luck with epic/gog through heroic games launcher and battle.net through lutris and bottles. The only launcher that has given me a ton of grief is the ea launcher.

I don't play cracked games, so I do not have any experience trying them. ROMs for older systems work great in mulators though.

Steam generally runs well since they have Proton integration and steamdb/by default Proton tries to have the right settings. Still I agree with you, a lot of times there are issues. I prefer to use GOG and that's definitely trickier and you need to check winedb. I find it easier just to install on a system WINE and then have Lutris manage, check off DXVK or whatever else I want through Lutris. Still not as smooth as Windows. Also...for modding...it's kind of annoying. I do have MO2 working with my favorite modded games, but it was rather annoying to get that setup the first time and still things can be tricky depending on the mods and the games. Skyrim AE especially, a properly modded Skyrim has a ton of fixes and extenders and libs and stuff, that's not always going to work so smoothly.

At least you found Nobara though, other distros you have to install a lot of dropped lib32 packages that games still need, even on the Linux native games, which I've tried to grab where available. Maybe you have the answers maybe you don't but clearly it's not out of the box functional.

I have Win10 on my main daily driver, Mint on my secondary, my brother uses Arch and has distro hopped around but he's been on that for years. I've fiddled with Nobara and do like it over Mint for pure gaming and probably would use Nobara on a future main build. But I've been hesitating on a new PC build due to shenanigans by MS and I still don't know if e-cores work properly on Linux either.

 

[loki1944]

"Expect Linux installs to suddenly increase"

I use Linux on a daily base for work and for some purposes this makes the best usage case (office work, switch, router, firewall, WAF, Servers, Cloud, etc.). Unfortunately the current games require a vast knowledge and very time consuming configuration. For each game you have to spent hours just to run it. I know... Proton and Wine but still not there. Until someone makes a custom distro with all running smooth I dont see it coming that soon. And not talking about GPU drivers or other hardware.

As for Windows going SaaS, this kinda happened in some way. A license was granted to anybody who want to upgrade from 7. Even 10 and 11 are free to use if you don't mind the watermark or use a valid key from older versions. That just to milk the customers data.
I honestly don't see enterprise environments moving away from M$ that soon.

And for me I still have tons of KMS, MVL and MSDN keys that work for current and older versions of Windows and M$ apps. I prefer a good hardware firewall with all NGFW features turned on and use what ever software I want behind it.

Too bad it's so complicated for average users.

 

[Watzupken]

Subscription model may do couple of things,
1. Increase piracy - If this helps to maintain offline versions of the OS
2. Boost usage of alternative OS - Mobile OS is most likely to benefit since there are people that I know that stopped using PC and relying more on their mobile phones and tablets. Linux usage will likely improve for gaming since Valve helped lower the barrier to entry.

 

[takaozo]

I currently use Nobara, which is gaming focused. I have other devices that use ChimeraOS and SteamOS. Im mostly installing games from steam, but I have had good luck with epic/gog through heroic games launcher and battle.net through lutris and bottles. The only launcher that has given me a ton of grief is the ea launcher.

I don't play cracked games, so I do not have any experience trying them. ROMs for older systems work great in mulators though.

Not using Steam these days anymore but I'll give Nobara a try, thanks.

 

[trents]

I assume this new model of a subsrciption, cloud-based OS will only apply to future customers. Can they? Will they? somehow force this on the existing Windows 11 user base? Switch your login mode from a Microsoft account to a local account folks, while you still can!

 

[hwertz]

I use Linux on a daily base for work and for some purposes this makes the best usage case (office work, switch, router, firewall, WAF, Servers, Cloud, etc.). Unfortunately the current games require a vast knowledge and very time consuming configuration. For each game you have to spent hours just to run it. I know... Proton and Wine but still not there. Until someone makes a custom distro with all running smooth I dont see it coming that soon. And not talking about GPU drivers or other hardware.

This simply isn't true in my experience. Don't get me wrong, it USED to be, even 3 or 4 years ago it was quite hit and miss and required futzing way too often. Now? I run CP2077, The Last of Us Part I, and a slew of other games, by installing the game. (The Last of Us Part I does advise me to upgrade my AMD video drivers even though I have an Nvidia card, but I click "OK" and it runs with no artifacts, no hitches, and most importantly no crashes or hangs.) I've had maybe 2 games in steam where I had to switch to an older Proton version, I picked an older version off a dropdown menu and it worked. Running games in Wine, I installed a few things like "Visual C++ runtime" and so on initially using winetricks as games complained about things missing; by the second or third game, I must have had everything installed these games expect because I've just been able to run "wine setup.exe" (or whatever, I suppose I could use the GUI and double-click on it) to run the installer and that's it, it's installed and it runs.

There ARE those games that are not really compatible and you have to screw around with things to see if you can get them to run or not, but it's pretty uncommon. Take a look at the SteamDB (steam deck compatibility pages) and you'll see, most games just install and run, most of the ones that have any adjustments are recommended settings (in the game) to get best visual quality while improving battery life, or (since a battery-powered Ryzen is not exactly an RTX4090) to improve frame rate.

Don't get me wrong, 5 years ago Wine and Proton were not at the state they are now (it took futzing to run almost every game, and with futzing you had maybe 50-75% success rate); and the GPU drivers weren't either (well, Nvidia binary drivers were; the Intel GPU 3D drivers were awful, but rewriting them as fully modern Mesa Gallium drivers has made a miraculous difference, I can run basically everything on just a integrated Intel GPU now... )

 

[hwertz]

My expectation (and I could be totally wrong!) is that they'll keep both (perpetual and subscription.) I think they'll have to handle this carefully though!

If they handle this right, they could continue to get the "free money" from force-bundles Windows copies being shipped on almost every PC made; AND get some macOS and Linux users, or Apple/Android tablet users with a big enough screen, paying for a subscription "in-the-cloud" copy of Windows for running some Windows apps, remote into it and do whatever they need to do; it could increase Windows usage and bring them easy revenue.

If they handle it wrong, so you pay a subscription and have access to your local machine and an "in-the-cloud" Windows system. At that point, why would vendors keep "force-bundling" Windows on systems if it is now essentially a trial version (after all, it'll run like 3-6 months then expect further payments), when they could put Linux on there and the user has an option of not paying anything and continuing to use Linux locally, or pay a Windows subscription and remote into it.

 

[Impudicus]

So this may kill PC gaming on Windows 11. Finally might see games being developed of Linux, and may open a window to finally get off of Windows for good at home.

 

[balzarch]

Excellent opportunity for Apple to develop game capabilities.

 

[Ben Myers]

Never mind online gaming. People use their computers for their own tasks and productivity, too.

The working assumption of Microsoft is that the network has 99.99999999% up time. I live in a part of the world with "good" electrical power from National Grid, so we've only had three days of electrical outage and regular beeps of the UPS when there are all-too-regular temporary drops in line voltage.

Do I want to put up with even more surveillance from Microsoft, collecting info about the software I use, the web sites I visit and heaven knows what else? The answer? N-O-O-O-O-O-O-O! Loudly.

 

[loki1944]

It isn't that difficult to play windows games using Steam/Proton or Bottles for Wine. For 95% of games it doesn't take very much effort or time (5-10 Minutes for initial config).

Well steam is hardly the only thing to consider; putting a vast number of games out of reach.

 

[loki1944]

This simply isn't true in my experience. Don't get me wrong, it USED to be, even 3 or 4 years ago it was quite hit and miss and required futzing way too often. Now? I run CP2077, The Last of Us Part I, and a slew of other games, by installing the game. (The Last of Us Part I does advise me to upgrade my AMD video drivers even though I have an Nvidia card, but I click "OK" and it runs with no artifacts, no hitches, and most importantly no crashes or hangs.) I've had maybe 2 games in steam where I had to switch to an older Proton version, I picked an older version off a dropdown menu and it worked. Running games in Wine, I installed a few things like "Visual C++ runtime" and so on initially using winetricks as games complained about things missing; by the second or third game, I must have had everything installed these games expect because I've just been able to run "wine setup.exe" (or whatever, I suppose I could use the GUI and double-click on it) to run the installer and that's it, it's installed and it runs.

There ARE those games that are not really compatible and you have to screw around with things to see if you can get them to run or not, but it's pretty uncommon. Take a look at the SteamDB (steam deck compatibility pages) and you'll see, most games just install and run, most of the ones that have any adjustments are recommended settings (in the game) to get best visual quality while improving battery life, or (since a battery-powered Ryzen is not exactly an RTX4090) to improve frame rate.

Don't get me wrong, 5 years ago Wine and Proton were not at the state they are now (it took futzing to run almost every game, and with futzing you had maybe 50-75% success rate); and the GPU drivers weren't either (well, Nvidia binary drivers were; the Intel GPU 3D drivers were awful, but rewriting them as fully modern Mesa Gallium drivers has made a miraculous difference, I can run basically everything on just a integrated Intel GPU now... )

Simply too complicated for me; even doing a W98SE/DOS install is more doable for me.

 

[Mark Fuller]

I think that if windows becomes a subscription only service, It will continue the trend in the industry to put everything you do and all of your personal life at the mercy of people like hackers who are out for no good. Cloud based services on the internet are susceptible to these people which in my opinion continues the trend in just about every industry there is to open up as much personal information to other people as they can possibly get. I remember when you could get a loan at the bank very easily before credit checks, etc. I don't think there is any more credit fraud today than there was in those days before Experian, Transunion and Equifax. It seems just about for anything you try to get you have to divulge more of your life's history to get it. It's just like we were talking about with data caps, you either don't get the service you want for a reasonable price or have to pay for something you don't want. It seems that were are in the midst of a surveillance conspiracy. Everyone says that they don't divulge your personal information to anyone else, but I still keep getting unwanted emails and spam from somewhere.