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My Windows rule-of-thumb is "Upgrade every other release." It served me well in the past when avoiding several weird Microsoft fads/features they love to cram into those 'cursed' releases. 98 -> XP, skip ME (to be fair, this window of releases was chaotic) XP -> 7, skip Vista. 7 -> 10, skip 8. However these days I only use Windows for games, and Valve is making inroads into that environment. Windows 10 might be my last Windows version. > folks are completely unaware at how antiquated their OS is at this point. This release cycle is stretched far beyond Microsoft's historical cadence. For comparison, 7 released in 2009, 8 in 2012, and 10 in 2015. Compare that to the 2021 release of 11. The last time Windows had that long of a release cycle was the XP (2001) to Vista (2007) cycle. That era was plagued with development issues and gave rise to the very long XP deployments that Microsoft struggled to escape as well. It's not that it's 'old' that bothers me, but more like Microsoft doesn't give me a good reason for upgrading despite the long cycle. Microsoft's decades long obsession with "Appifying" their OS, their wavering commitment to Windows prompting Valve to invest in alternative OS development, the "Microsoft Account" to log in fiasco, the botched AI rollouts (plural!), turning all of their applications into subscription webapps, the list seems to grow every quarter. It's not all bad. WSL is the single best thing Microsoft did in the last decade, and maybe ever! It single-handedly caused me to upgrade from 7 to 10 Pro for Hypervisor support. For a long time WSL + Windows was my primary development box. If I were in charge of Windows, I would double-down on WSL and begin the arduous process of moving the Kernel from NT to Linux (or BSD, etc etc). Windows would then become an application layer with paid business support rather than core development. I would drive ports of popular programs and invest in stuff like Mono and Wine for supporting the long-tail of applications. It would also fit with Microsoft's decades long strategy of Windows being the OS for multiple PC and hardware manufacturers, but shifting the revenue focus from OS sales to their App store and subscriptions. |