Goodbye Windows?

Published on October 22, 2025

source: facebook

I don't think executives at Microsoft, staring at their shiny Excel forecast sheets truly understand the chain of events which are triggered by their arbitrary decision.

What I can say with certainty is that this decision starts to actively teach the world to live without a traditional Windows OS. Or at least consider it. For the past thirty odd years, the Windows monopoly was sustained by inertia alone.

Then something happened. The internet. The OS became a little less important as the browsers became containtment chambers. This further changed when MSFT decided to pivot into cloud. For example, they pushed Office to the cloud and Microsoft 365 runs suprisingly brilliantly on a web browser. Then there was this embrace of Windows Subsystem for Linux, which made Windows a great option for developers working on Linux servers. But it also brought Linux closer to Windows users.

And now, with this Windows 11 thing, they are providing the final and crucial lesson.

By turning Windows 10 into a deadend, they are forcing a generation of users to re-evaluate their system setup from first principles. The Steam Deck has already proven that a massive library of Windows games runs well on Linux. MacBooks with Apple's silicon are seducing creators and developers with great performance and efficiency that Intel-based PCs haven't been able to keep up with. And for the vast majority of users, a Chromebook or even just a tablet is becoming good enough.

With Windows, at least for me, the real lock-in was never the Start Menu. It was the ecosystem. But MSFT is now holding the OS (container) a hostage. Simultaneously, the contents of that container and their competitors are accessible from anywhere. While the whole gimmick is to get the user to upgrade from C:\Windows10 to C:\Windows11?, what happens if the user realizes they don't need a C:\ drive at all?

The official line is that Windows 11 requires newer hardware for security.

Maybe, you are from the corporate world. Maybe for you this is just another line item on a spreadsheet. Enterprises with thousands of machines still on Windows 10 will most definitely sigh and pay the ransom for extended security updates.

However, what if you're a regular Joe? A student, a parent, a gaming enthusiast, a lawyer, a content creator, a person who actually bought your computer with your own hard earned money sometime ago? What you see are nag screens, the performance throttling on unsupported hardware, and the best of all? The constant insinuation that your perfectly good Ryzen 5 or 7th gen or older Intel Core i7 is a worthless fossil. These machines are not slow. They are not insecure in any practical sense for 99% of users. They are simply on the wrong side of a line Microsoft drew in the sand to force a hardware refresh cycle the market wasn't demanding.

This is neither a technical necessity nor a mandated security concern. It is a business decision. And the lasting legacy of this forced upgrade cycle won't find a shiny new Windows 11 desktop on every desk.