LOL! I really wanna see this!

So sorry to hear this. I wish him a fast recovery.

Understandable. I also had a weaker PC until recently and love what Linux was able to do with it even though I haven’t personally tested Alpine. Your rice is also really beautiful for such a minimal system.

I’m curious: What made you choose Alpine specifically and what were you using before?

You could pull this off with rofi or wofi(if you’re on Wayland). I don’t know if a theme like this exists already(it should), but if it doesn’t you could just make your own. As for the icons, I think the easiest option would be making an icon theme. If you want to call the menu by pressing the Win key, there’s probably already a built in option for that if you’re on a desktop environment. If you’re not, there are additional programs such as sxhkd you’ll need.

In my experience, it isn’t as much about brand loyalty as it is about a mix of convenience and damage control.

For as many faults as Windows has, Microsoft would definitely reel themselves in from jumping the shark. Yearly fees could be justified by saying they’re really affordable + you get customer support. Add onto that how entrenched Windows is and how unapproachable the competition is by comparison(seriously, how many computers come with Linux or BSD pre-installed?) and you basically can’t lose.

Sure, there will be a subset of people will switch to an alternative or pirate Windows, but regular home users aren’t the major source of Microsoft’s revenue anyway, it’s businesses that largely depend on Windows.

Yeah, no way that’s gonna happen. They’re never gonna kiss those Windows licensing fees goodbye. If anything, they’ll double down and make it a subscription. Linux is too free for Microsoft and their shareholders.

Nice! You actually managed to make a decent game out of a funny sounding title. It’s weird, because for a second after reading the title, I had to do a double take.

Rest assured, I’m pretty confident that won’t be the case. While web apps certainly have gained their fair share of popularity, some things still need to be localized on your machine. Chrome OS is just proof of that since it has really taken off after it had forgone its original goal of being fully web based. Last I checked, it even had Steam working allowing you to play games on YOUR computer. Also, keep in mind if your fears did come true, Microsoft would have to run a cloud instance for every single computer running windows on the planet at the same time. This might just be my optimism and faulty assertion, but I don’t think that’s something they would want to do. A subscription based OS is likely, though.

First off, I highly doubt the ‘cloud only’ rumors are true. By definition, an operating system must help the machine itself operate. The only way I see something like that being feasable is if the extra app bloatware is web based, which I certainly wouldn’t complain about.

I currently use Linux quite heavily and have a Windows 11 VM on my desktop for all my unsupported software. I am using the Ghost Spectre version and I’m enjoying it quite a lot, it actually makes Windows a good experience. As for 12, I’ll wait and see what it’s like and decide then (for my VM, not bare metal).