I would encourage people to read “An Open Letter to Hobbyists” written by Bill Gates in 1976. It was pretty clear that Windows was always destined to be garbage. In the letter, Bill chastises people for sharing software and insists that all software should be payed for. He insists that good software can only exist if it costs money to use.
February 3, 1976
An Open Letter to Hobbyists
To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these “users” never bought BASIC (less thank 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?
Is this fair? One thing you don’t do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn’t make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren’t they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.
I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.
Bill Gates
General Partner, Micro-Softhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
Throughout most of the 70s, software was not protected by copyright and was freely shared by Hobbyist computer users. Computer companies led legal efforts to make software copyright protected starting in 1969.
According to Brewster Kahle the legal characteristic of software changed also due to the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.[12] The Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works concluded in 1978 with the recommendations that became the Computer Software Copyright Act of 1980.[13]
Starting in February 1983 IBM adopted an “object-code-only” model for a growing list of their software and stopped shipping much of the source code,[14][15] even to licensees.
In 1983, binary software became copyrightable in the United States as well by the Apple vs. Franklin law decision,[16] before which only source code was copyrightable.[17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_software
Bill Gates got in early on a new market and used newly created laws to his financial advantage. His goal has always been to limit what people can do with computers and software. Each new version of Window become more restrictive due to new technology. When Windows XP reached end of support, people complained that Windows 7 had too many malicious features. When Windows 7 reached end of support, people complained that Windows 10 had too many malicious features. When Windows 10 reached end of support, people complained that Windows 11 had too many malicious features.
Richard Stallman started the GNU Project in 1983 with the goal of creating a full operating system that did not restrict users. He created the GNU Public License to protect the freedom of users. In 1993, Linus Torvalds applied GPL to the Linux Kernel and then people started to combine the Linux kernel with the GNU system.
From the very beginning, there has been always the capitalists who will take advantage of a new space, especially computing. Thus, this is why there also develops counterbalance, like the Free Software movement.
Do upgrade from 10, upgrade to linux
I know too much to let an unpatched OS touch the internet though
https://massgrave.dev/windows10_eol
Switch to 21h2 iot ltsc, 2021 version on that page.
You’ll have security updates until 2032.
I just want to think about my OS as little as possible. I currently basically never think about windows 11. Is there any reason to move to linux?
Bazzite promotes itself as a “gaming” Linux OS, but it works fine as a solid desktop that is practically impossible to break, it quietly self-updates, and it has a slick “app store”. You can literally just install and forget.
The only issues that will cause you problems is if you need some specific proprietary software like MS Office or Photoshop, or a game with kernel-level anticheat.
I quit Linux distro-hopping for 2 years because I got tired of messing with my system and just wanted to be able to boot reliably and get business done, then with windows 10 I moved back to Bazzite/Universal Blue/Fedora Atomic and stayed since. I use Bluefin on family computers and they just work without me running tech support for them.
I’m on bluefun and it’s been rock solid. Best linux experience I’ve ever had.
Never heard of that one.
It’s like bazzite, but not tweaked out for gaming. Essentially Fedora Atomic, but with a good default setup with a bunch of quality of life improvements either built in or easy to implement.
You may not think about it much now but it will be st the forefront of your mind if a windows update bricks your SSD.
It happened to my girlfriend’s friend right before an assignment was due and he had no other backups.
built-in adware, bloatware, spyware, and the coming auto-ingestion of your entire hard drive to an LLM are probably the biggest arguments. Pretty good arguments but transitioning seems annoying. Completely agree with you and am struggling with the idea of the change right now, like, I wish I gave more of a shit lol. Been trying to test out on a VM but my VM runs like absolute shit and makes it very uncompelling (i’m sure it would work better as the base installed OS)
Also wanna chime in to recommend Bazzite. Super easy to use, works out of the box for gaming and basic computer use, don’t need to think about it at all and it doesn’t come with all the bullshit windows comes with.
When you talk about gaming here is it through proton or some other compatibility layer? I’d love to move away from windows but I also love playing janky MMOs that won’t run on Proton (afaik). I have a steam deck so I’ve played around with proton a bit and for the most part it’s plenty good but not sure if I want to make the jump for my pc that’s mostly for gaming.
edit: 5 seconds of research and I’ve answered my own question. Unless some kind nerd here had a good method/explanation/sales pitch I think I’ll have to update to win11 soon enough.
It sounds like your gaming use case is a bit niche so it’s possible Linux might not work out for you, specially since you have a Steam Deck and probably have tried already.
But if you ever want to try it with a full on desktop install, you could just install some distro like Bazzite or CachyOS in a spare drive or big enough pendrive and see if you can get your games to run there. Using launchers/tools outside of Steam like Heroic, Bottles and Lutris will probably be of help.
It takes some getting used to if you use it for software development but it’s doable. I haven’t run into anything that wasn’t surmountable with distrobox or podman yet and I commit crimes against software every day.
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Absolutely love this channels content. The guy is so knowledgeable and explains things so clearly
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
