[serious] MS to update Windows every 3 years

The good thing about Linux is if your distribution makes boneheaded decisions like MS, you can switch to another one.

I'm a sys admin that uses windows on my personal machine. I'm not trying to do more work on my own time.

Many many people have no choice.

A number of software companies have software which has become industry standard and do not support windows. That means any new employees have been educated and trained in using that software. So to defy that , you are either the odd man out in the company, or the odd company out in the industry.

That causes you disadvantages of interoperability with colleagues or a need to train your new employees with skills that are typically only useful within your own company and delay the return on investment of your new hire which has financial implications.

Wine has come a long way but many industry standard softwares do not play nicely. E.g. Adobe software, autocad, solidworks. If you get it running, you are not guaranteed the next version will work and if your whole team upgrades except you, you might lose the ability to work with their files. Your boss may not be happy if you need to spent x hours or days getting up and running again because you had to upgrade from v21 to v22 and it didn't work out of the box in wine.

Businesses need and require a different level of support vs home users so that issues can be fixed in a timely and reliable manner. Adding wine into the mix means every software problem now has potential causes not just in the software itself, but also in the wine setup.

So ultimately where no native application exists and no compatible application exists, wine is not yet an acceptable solution for business use except in very fringe cases. So that leaves virtual machines as a solution, but then you are running windows with extra support issues again. So why would you not just run windows.

I offer this answer as the reason windows is and will remain ubiquitous not as my own personal preferences or opinions.

I tried working in Linux for several months but I kept coming up against barriers that cost me time , solely because of my choice to use it and not use windows. When I encountered issues, IT would not and could not help. In the end I deleted my Linux partition because I simply could not work with file formats colleagues were exchanging when working in Linux and I would have to switch to windows. In some cases there were conversations or workarounds but again these typically add work and introduce issues at times.

If you want windows gone, the only way is to convince large software companies to support other operating systems natively or for wine to reach 100% parity with the experience on windows. The former will only happen if there is a financial positive for the companies and the latter will likely never happen, or take a very long time due to windows being a moving target.

As long as it keeps being shipped pre installed with every computer - especially laptops - it will maintain dominance.

I'm considering opening a hobby computer shop and have been talking with a few possible suppliers and I instantly noticed I was in for a fun ride.

One supplier has its own laptop line. I questioned on the possibility of purchasing machines from them with no OS, as my intention is to promote Linux, and custom install machines with different distros, and I was told that is not possible as all of their come pre installed with a windows license.

When questioned if I could wipe the disks and return the licenses I was told it is not possible as the windows is shipped within a dedicated non erasable storage chip, from where the system can be reinstalled whenever necessary from the UEFI.

This is a two dime supplier on a non relevant market.