Big dumb corporation doing big dumb corporation stuff. It's so big it can't behave coherently anymore. But it's also so big that it acts like a black hole that sucks all the money towards itself regardless of how stupid, unproductive and wasteful it is being.
The sad part is that all of this is all self-inflicted in the name of "growth" for the shareholders. They absolutely could take 7, modernize it, call it "12" and release it as a lightweight, fast and more privacy-respecting OS. It would probably be far cheaper to make as well.
But that's not what the Corporate elements of the company want. They see the OS as a platform to force feed to the users features that they can market as "lucrative" to the shareholders. Nobody else wants that. I predict that Windows 12 will have some sort of baked in "AI" that you can't get rid of as a bare minimum.
But this is none of my concern. They've finally pushed me over the hump and now I'm 100% sold to Linux. It has gotten so much more approachable than it used to be. Especially with Mint.
Maybe if after a disastrous enough reception of Windows 11 they might make a Windows 12 that actually cares about being more palatable to the users, like they did with Windows 7 following the disaster that was Vista.
But I think they'll most probably only move to meet us halfway like they did with Windows 10 following the other disaster that was 8. Where they replaced a major irritant with another and then slowly stacked more and more irritants with updates thereafter. They are too addicted to the revenue from data harvesting to give it up.
I was hesitant for a long while and ended up installing Linux Mint on an old SSD I had laying around this way there was no commitment.
Now I'm realizing I haven't booted up my regular windows 10 drive ever since and am considering getting rid of it altogether.
On a side note I created a virtual machine on the Linux side that runs Windows 10 LTSC on it for a few other programs I sometimes need that would be very difficult or impossible to make work on Linux like Inventor, Office and Photoshop. It lives trapped in the box and isn't allowed to connect to the internet. If I need to download something for it I download it on Linux and drag and drop it into the box. It's like having a little pet Windows that you keep locked in a pen, so it works for you and only for you and it can't escape to go into your house to spy on you and shit bloatware all over your carpet.
What you are asking for is for Valve to start behaving like developers like EA and Activision, who keep milking the crap out of their franchises with one bland generic release after the other for a quick cash grab.
The fact that Gaben doesn't force his employees to work on the game just to make money is the reason why Half-Life games are of such good quality. The employees at Valve work on what they are motivated to work on at the moment. They aren't being given arbitrary deadlines from overhead either. This is how we got amazing games like Team Fortress 2 and the Portal games too. Both Half-Life games were major milestones in video game history by pushing the envelope. And currently, no Valve employees believe that the conditions are currently set for this to happen with a new Half-Life 3. It would never meet the hype if they tried right now and it would be a huge disappointment.
Half-Life 3 isn't vaporware either as Valve openly admits that they are not working on it at the moment.
Just accept that great things can't happen as often as we wished they did.
Speaking of Team Fortress 2 and Portal, I have been around to witness other attempted iterations of what TF2 could have been been, only to be abandoned by Valve because it wasn't good enough. Then Valve finally got their vision for what the game ultimately ended up being and then suddenly everyone was motivated to work on the game. The first Portal game was also an experiment that motivated Valve employees to work on the sequel. Hopefully one day there will be a lightbulb moment in Valve and everyone will be motivated on working on Half-Life 3 and the resulting product will surely be worthy of the name. But you can't force it to happen.
Hopefully it will happen while Gaben is still in control of Valve though because there is no telling what will happen to the company's unique culture and philosophy after that.
According to the article they might be doing this to further discourage people from bypassing the hardware restrictions for installing Windows 11.
Don't worry Microsoft. I am fully deterred from ever installing Windows 11 on any of my current or future computers already.
They wouldn't be acting like this if they weren't convinced that they are in a monopolistic situation that is strong enough to let them get away with it. They don't seem to realize how user friendly and approachable some Linux distros have become, or at least are making the bet that most of their users won't discover it. I hope this anti consumer attitude pushes more and more people into giving Linux a try, like it did for me.
They are right to worry for the safety of their staff but not because of the gun owners turning their firearms in. They should be worried about becoming the target of criminals looking to steal those firearms from their delivery chain.