> The windows EULA (End User License Agreement) clearly states that the agreement can be refused by the end user, and that windows can be returned to the manufacturer. In real life, however, manufacturers typically say that they can't refund the windows license and tell the user to contact microsoft directly. I can't say I really blame manufacturers for doing that [...]
I can. If companies want to profit by being a middle-man between the OS developers and the consumer, then they also inherit the responsibility of actually dealing with said consumer. If Microsoft wants to be a pain in their arse and make it harder for them to actually fulfil their obligations as a merchant, maybe they should stop doing business deals with a company that's actively hostile to them.
It's the same thing as tech stores that try to foist you over the the hardware manufacturer if you buy a faulty component from them. You don't get to put your fingers in the pie and then claim that you have no responsibility to ensure the quality of an item you're advertising and selling.
You buy things from their website and pay using their payment platform. The website doesn't make it obvious that you're actually buying from a third party ("sold by: X" is in small letters and gets lost between all the other details). And Amazon lump items from different vendors together in the same product page.
I literally bought like 3 items on Amazon before realizing that not all items were sold by Amazon themselves.
When it turns out that items are counterfeit, they try to offload a great part of their responsibility onto the legal system, because they see themselves as the victims of counterfeit, not as facilitators [1]. Luckily, some judges are not buying their excuse [2].
(Even if buy items "sold by Amazon", you can get a counterfeit product [3].)
I find Amazon’s system very confusing. I recently bought a Magic Keyboard for my iPad Pro ($100 off!) [1] on Amazon. The purchase page didn’t show a return policy, and at the top it said “visit the Apple Store”. This made it seem like the device was being sold by Apple.
But of course there’s no way Apple would take a return in store if I purchased via Amazon.
So I chatted an Amazon rep to see what the return policy would be for that item. She looked at the link and said “because this item is sold and shipped by Amazon, there’s a 30 day return period, and return shipping is covered.” I had the rep email me a chat transcript just in case her interpretation turned out to be wrong.
This system makes no sense to me. What does it mean when you see the “visit the Apple Store”? I thought this indicated that this was the seller?
I should note that I wouldn’t buy most Apple peripherals through Amazon, but I’m pretty sure no one is making knockoff Magic Keyboards just yet...
Brands often have a “store” on Amazon, which is a dedicated landing page. You’re likely the victim of confusion between that and “The Apple Store (tm)”.
Oh I’m aware this isn’t the Apple Store (as in the physical buildings). I just don’t understand what the brand store is if this item is considered to be sold by Amazon (as the rep said). Is it just a collection of items sold by Amazon and others that are manufactured by one company? I assumed that the company was involved in the selling.
For example, I would be more likely to trust an item is legit if it supposedly comes from “the Apple Store” on Amazon, as opposed to some random Amazon seller. But if it’s just a collection of items from various different sellers, then it’s pretty much meaningless to me.
EDIT: can someone explain the downvotes here? I'm just replying to the comment above, describing what confuses me about this. If this is super obvious to other people, then what does "visit the Apple Store" on Amazon mean?
These two indicate who holds the stock and who delivers the product. All prime-eligible items are shipped by Amazon.com (although some other shipping methods provide 'prime free shipping', without a 2-day guarantee), while Amazon also will wholesale buy and sell items themselves if they're high-volume enough, which is indicated by 'Sold by Amazon.com'.
The whole 'Visit the <Brand> Store' is a way to go to a page that only shows products sold under that brand/company. For example, this Corsair ql120[0] has "Visit the Corsair store" under the product name which shows all Corsair products. Amazon generally limits the amount of off-Amazon linking done, although it's not strict and it's not off-limits in product images or the description.
Thanks — I can see that it says who sells/ships the item just above the protection plan up-sell area, which I typically don't look at. It's useful for me to know that the "visit X Store" link at the top doesn't necessarily mean that Company X is actually involved in inventory selection/shipment, which is what I would have assumed based on having seen pages like the olight page, which seem to have been designed by olight. [1]
I suspect that Amazon's argument is that they're more akin to eBay than they are to a supermarket. "We're not selling the product, we're only selling the floorspace" kind of thing.
That's a lie, but it is certainly a blurrier line than the one for traditional retailers. I don't think it's a coincidence that Amazon has been very slow to enter markets with strong consumer law like Australia.
amazon's return policy is pretty good though AFAIK? 30 days no questions asked and they pay the return shipping. pretty sure the transaction gets reversed immediately, or at least as soon as the first scan on the return shipment. not a lot of retailers beat that.
Sure, their return policy is good if you bought an item and later decided it doesn't suit your needs - that's an issue that's often entirely your own fault, and they're happy to refund you in the hopes of keeping a customer. That's usually going to be a win-win.
But if you've been sold an item under false pretenses, their return policy isn't a "policy", it's a legal requirement. I'm not charitable enough to use the terms "pretty good" to describe any process where step 1 is defrauding the customer.
Amazon sell counterfeit items but want to avoid the legal responsibility of doing so.
I feel like this is different because Amazon does tell you what happens, and they can technically argue that you are responsible for understanding what you are buying (the ethics of hiding this information is very questionable). On the other hand, the EULA is specific language that is legally bounded.
It’s even more confusing than that. If you buy an item “sold by..” but fulfilled by Amazon, you deal with Amazon for returns, right? But if it’s shipped by the vendor then yeah you are right.
I've never gotten a counterfeit sold by amazon, but I have gotten used items sold as "new" by Amazon (not by a third-party seller). In one instance, the item was not only used, but a piece of safety-critical equipment in an extremely dangerous condition that could easily have resulted in dismemberment or death if used.
It is pretty amazing how Microsoft has gotten away with this, which probably had few comparables in the business world when OEMS first started pre-installing Windows on personal computers. Gates' entire fortune rests on the success of it.
I have always thought there is this underlying assumption that generally no person would ever purchase a computer that had no OS pre-installed. (Obviously that is not true, there are exceptions, e.g., pre-Microsoft and even today, with development boards.) If people were happy to install their own choice of OS (if there were choices), then could Microsoft have been so successful.
Computers have given rise to middleman-based businesses the likes of which have never been seen before.
What we are seeing with the internet perhaps mirrors the PC. As with the PC, where it was assumed that generally no person could do anything useful with "just a PC" without a pre-selected, pre-installed OS, there is an underlying assumption that generally no person could do anything useful with "just an internet connection" without a pre-selection of some certain "tech" companies.
It is nigh impossible to purchase computers and connect to the internet without the presence of middlemen and pre-made selections.
We have several "Windows PCs" at work, but my coworkers see them as "PC that I use to operate X instrument", "PC that lets me do Y". While people obviously do recognize the Microsoft logo and brand on them, mentally they're just tools. I think most people view computers as a means to an end - to get something done.
It is nigh impossible to purchase computers and connect to the internet without the presence of middlemen and pre-made selections.
Who are you buying from? I get computers from Central Computer, which has five stores in Silicon Valley. They charge $30 extra to install Windows 10, $64 for Windows 10 Pro, and $0 for Linux.
> It is pretty amazing how Microsoft has gotten away with this, which probably had few comparables in the business world when OEMS first started pre-installing Windows on personal computers.
They had plenty of experience doing similar things with MS-Dos; and they had a consent decree to tell them where the line was. (and I think they crossed the line again anyway)
> > The windows EULA (End User License Agreement) clearly states that the agreement can be refused by the end user, and that windows can be returned to the manufacturer. In real life, however, manufacturers typically say that they can't refund the windows license and tell the user to contact microsoft directly.
I did just that, called MS and they had very politely asked me to f*ck off or contact the manufacturer again, the license was issued to the small family company where this was a very unnecessary expense (so there were no consumer protection laws applicable to this). In practice this is all empty promises, now I just furiously refuse to deal with Windows and Microsoft because of their dishonesty.
> maybe they should stop doing business deals with a company that's actively hostile to them
Remember, at one point they were considered a monopoly on PC operating systems. It is not like PC vendors had an option. Not signing on to the cartel was not an option.
Retailers in EU(and EEA and UK) have to take the product back if you don't agree with the licence, the problem is that this is not what customers usually want. People want to buy a laptop, disagree with the licence, and get money back just for the licence. Instead retailers will(or should) offer you a refund for the entire device, which is not what most people want.
I’d like to buy a phone and then get a refund for the screen, microphone, camera, battery, speakers, case, antennas and the modem. And the software too please.
Of course this only worked because Microsoft put this in the license and they have taken it out long ago. You can’t return Windows for a refund anymore.
Are you honestly unaware that UK spelling is licence, or are you trying to make some kind of point?
>>You’re contradicting yourself.
No, I'm not, but I will explain again.
"Retailers in EU(and EEA and UK) have to take the product back if you don't agree with the licence" - the product. As in, the whole laptop/personal computer/tablet/whatever. If you don't agree with the licence bundled with the device, the retailer has to offer you a refund for the whole product. You can't return just the windows licence alone. I thought I made it quite clear in the earlier comment, but I guess not.
Many OEMs did try to ship PCs without Windows and Microsoft abused their monopoly to “encourage” OEMs and retailers back into the fold. This was one of the cases brought up in the Microsoft anti-trust investigations.
I'm also confused about this. My parents bought a "cloud-based" Smart Thermometer. The start-up behind it went out-of-business and the device got bricked. My parents asked for a refund from the distributor and they complied.
Why would it be any different with Microsoft? I understand that it's "cooler" to storm the office of a big corporations, but it's really the middleman that need to take responsibility here.
They want all the benefits but no responsibilities. Their contracts and terms are written with that explicit aim. There's no obvious way to fight it either. People end up getting used to it...
I’m going to get downvoted into oblivion for this, but as a teenager who remembers when this happened, this always struck me as the absolute dumbest idea and the most useless of performative actions.
First, it was sponsored by a VC-backed company (that had hired a documentary crew to capture their success, the ill-fated VA Linux Systems (which eventually became known as Geeknet) and the pretty poor propaganda documentary “Revolution OS” that managed to just sort of forget the whole dot com collapse thing)), so although I know the LUGs were part of it, this was a marketing event by a company looking to boost their IPO. I didn’t know any of that at the time, but looking back, it’s so clear this was just yet another VA Linux publicity event.
Second, to anyone who wasn’t part of the group “protesting” — that is, outsiders — all you see is a bunch of weirdos dressed up with picket signs outside a sales office (they didn’t even go to Redmond) to demand action, only to be greeted what seem to be very polite corporate people with a sign and lemonade.
Third, it fundamentally changed nothing. It took the DoJ agreements to lessen the hold Microsoft had one some OEMs, but it really took the proliferation of Chromebooks (which was predicated by the short-lived netbook era) for manufacturers to get cheaper deals on Windows licenses and to offer more customizations of OS choice at purchase. That still had zero impact on Linux on the desktop adoption rates.
And sure, most bigger OEMs if you buy direct will let you customize a machine with no OS and sometimes with Ubuntu, but the Ubuntu XPS 13 isn’t much cheaper than the Windows variant (max $50), you just get more of an assurance that there is some sort of driver support for your system (although usually not for stuff like fingerprint readers).
So like, all I remember is that 21 years ago, some angry nerds showed up to an office park parking lot, got some free lemonade, were told politely to leave, and then went home with their cardboard signs screaming victory. When they didn’t get a refund. Didn’t change OEM terms, and had zero impact on OS adoption. OS adoption changed over the years but it wasn’t because of anything any of the people in that movement did, it was because of Apple and Google.
You won't get downvoted, but you make a few factually questionable statements (disclosure: I worked at VA from 1998 to 2002):
1. VA didn't sponsor the event, but a chunk of the staff of the company's Sunnyvale HQ attended (and most of us were in the LUGs). VA didn't have any need at that stage to boost the IPO, as the fever was already brewing for companies like VA and Red Hat (both IPO'd that year, RH in August and VA in December).
2. VA didn't hire a camera crew either, but a friend of one of the executive staff (Jon Hall) wanted to do a story about Open Source, so Jon brought him in for a few days to do interviews and film around the office (do I think the exec staff saw the PR upside? Sure. If they hadn't they would have been foolish. But they weren't the primary driver). And IIRC, Rev OS forgot the dot com collapse because it was edited and released right before the collapse began.
3. Do I think the event was performative nonsense? Sure. I thought it was then too, much as I thought RMS was ludicrous and various other "open source luminaries" were a tad too close to 'hubris based lifeform' but the event, in the grand scheme of things, was an amusing, if ultimately pointless exercise. Not all things need to induce a sea change or have a deeper point than getting like minded folks to make a statement for its own sake.
I appreciate the corrections, though I’m not sure I agree with all of them.
For the first point, I appreciate your correction. Still, the official writeup mentions that VA paid to make the shirts. And as you say, a huge number of employees were part of it. I still contend that the publicity of the event was beneficial for them, otherwise they wouldn’t have had employees there and they wouldn’t have had the community in shirts they made. Red Hat didn’t IPO until August, so I’ll still say having activities like this get press attention (be it for Linux in general or VA specifically) was good for the VA Roadshow.
For number two, I’ve been told by numerous former VA people that Larry paid for the documentary to be made (at least until the collapse happened) and then the filmmaker basically ran out of money, which is why the fall of the stock was literally an on-screen card at the tail-end of the film. The film came out in 2001, though I’m sure he finished filming after the IPO,
For the third, I agree with you. You’re right, it doesn’t have to induce a sea change. And for its time, I can see how some would find it amusing (at 15, I very much rolled my eyes, but I can understand how people who were there would have had fun). My only point was to push back on what I perhaps wrongly expected the narrative on HN to be, which is reflexive hagiography that doesn’t bear much resemblance to reality then or now.
Yep, VA paid for the shirts from the Community groups petty cash fund, much as we paid for events at LUGs and other non-corporate events (my first two years at VA we gave out endless amounts of swag, distro CDs, various and sundry, but the team was almost totally an island unto itself. I just have a view that the events were too community-level to have had much of anything to do with the roadshow (and certainly from a professionalism standpoint would have been a distraction), and MS was already doing FOSS (as well as other *nix vendors, primarily SUN) a bunch of favors with its antics.
I was given the "official" spiel from Hall and it was otherwise not discussed much at VA (other than deciding very shortly afterwards that we all looked largely ridiculous, a position I still agree with - thankfully I'm in it for all of 1.5 seconds), and what I recall was that it was finished shortly after IPO and then sat for a while (because of lack of funds) waiting for final edits. At that stage you can't exactly go back to re-film much if you're already scrambling for cash.
"My only point was to push back on what I perhaps wrongly expected the narrative on HN to be, which is reflexive hagiography that doesn’t bear much resemblance to reality then or now." My feelings on pretty much all coverage of SV in general. But I am very biased, in that I love what I do in tech at the micro level but am ambivalent as to what the industry itself has morphed into. The beginning VA days were full of pre-HN/TechCrunch/Reddit sincere sense of wonder and opportunity to do something for the time radically different; in many ways VA succeeded given where the alumni landed (various key spots at Google, 23andMe, AWS, Samsung, Apple, AMD etc) and I still consider that period to be some of the most exciting of my career, if only for the sheer seat-of-pants ride it was.
I learned a lot and made numerous lifelong friends (and maybe a few lifelong enemies), but it was a helluva ride (cheesy events held in Fry's parking lots notwithstanding).
“But I am very biased, in that I love what I do in tech at the micro level but am ambivalent as to what the industry itself has morphed into [...] I still consider that period to be some of the most exciting of my career, if only for the sheer seat-of-pants ride it was.”
Oof! It’s still important to be aware of the cost of that ambivalence. Maintaining an OS for desktop users? Probably pretty safe. Maintaining servers for Experian? Or Uber’s car right before they killed Elaine Herzberg? Yeah ambivalence (and that ride) is a privilege.
> VA didn't hire a camera crew either, but a friend of one of the executive staff (Jon Hall) wanted to do a story about Open Source
Jon "Maddog" Hall is an awesome guy, BTW. He used to be a constant presence at the Brazilian Free Software Forum (FISL). He's now the board chair of the LPI.
Oops, wrong one. John Hall (often used the faux middle name "Tiberius" for reasons no one understood) was a young exec from Stanford who now is an exec...somewhere else? (It's been a while since I even had to recall the guy), not Maddog. Maddog was and is a Prince of a fellow.
Huh! This reminded me that I once knew that there were two different people called Jon/John Hall, and then forgot.
I've met Maddog a number of times, most often in Brazil. It's amazing how much of a celebrity he is for Brazilians; there would sometimes literally be a long line of people waiting to be photographed with him.
He was/is one of the very few "open source luminaries" I actually think highly of as a person. Ted Tso, Jeremy Allison are a few others. Highly intelligent, highly thoughtful people. Working with them was a treasured experience.
It was a lark. It certainly wasn't "sponsored". The dot com collapse was still to come. Nobody had any expectation of it changing anything, or getting refunds. At the time there was no possibility of getting an XPS13 with no OS, never mind with Linux supported. It got some attention for Linux, which practically nobody had ever heard of before they saw the picket signs. Linux didn't own server farms. There weren't server farms, unless you count racks of Sun pizza-boxes owned by whoever had software on running on them.
> Second, to anyone who wasn’t part of the group “protesting” — that is, outsiders — all you see is a bunch of weirdos dressed up with picket signs outside a sales office (they didn’t even go to Redmond) to demand action, only to be greeted what seem to be very polite corporate people with a sign and lemonade.
The photos shown on that page are very similar to that of the Magician guild on the Arrested Development show (https://i.imgur.com/eipugIu.jpg). It's uncanny, actually.
The event itself was whimsical, fun and shone a large spotlight on the hypocrisy of your former employer. The license agreement was clear: if you did not agree to the terms of the Windows license, you could return the software for a full refund. This was at a time where Microsoft reigned supreme in the business world and enforced the terms of its license strictly. In my country, it caused the local office a lot of embarrassment when they were forced to admit that they had no way of coping with the entirely reasonable request of someone who didn't want to pay the Windows tax.
VA Linux is one of those prime examples of stock market mania. Close behind in terms of scale and similar in terms of philosophy/narrative (of the good small man sticking it to the evil big machine) to what we saw recently with GameStop. It is even a featured example in recent editions of The Intelligent Investor.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
The "mania" is in the public perception & pricing of securities. Many "mania" companies were legitimate, or at least had legitimate parts in it (look at the example of GameStop, there's nothing wrong with the company, but it was hilariously overpriced).
I had friends do the mail in but, I didn’t care as I used windows under OS/2.. I tried really hard to go full Linux before but compiling all the dependencies of everything got so old quick. Sadly nothing has changed there.
@scruffyherder: "I had friends do the mail in but, I didn’t care as I used windows under OS/2.. I tried really hard to go full Linux before but compiling all the dependencies of everything got so old quick. Sadly nothing has changed there."
That’s an archived/print-formatted design. It isn’t how the actual website looked in 1999 (CSS and the DOM weren’t advanced enough for those kinds of layouts then), unfortunately.
That's definitely 1999-era HTML and layout, except for the "This is an archived page" header, which is the only CSS on the page. The rest is all well-known tricks from the time: tables, image maps, a few embedded images. Heh, it even has the blockquote trick to pad the margins. Brings back some pretty horrid memories.
Crazy to realize the long path we did, from being unable to buy any laptop at all without a Windows license to being able to buy computers directly shipped with Linux, and even open hardware.
I guess that for younger people, it might be hard to remember the "good old time" when we were fighting for reimbursement of the license.
One time, I did the process to try to get reimbursed for one laptop in France.
At that time, there was a lot of uncertainty and no clearly defined process, but it was clear that the French law was on our side.
In the doubt, I did it all: registered letters to HP and to the retailer.
I think that in theory it was supposed to be HP that should reimbursed me, but I think that they never replied to me.
On the other side, I received a reimbursement from the retailer in a kind of "nice unofficial way":
<< We think that we are not responsible to do that, but here is a 100 francs reimbursement so that you will stop annoying us>>
(So it was not really needed that I burned/shred my Windows license or anything else)
Well, at least now in the EU it's completely 1000% legal for you to take that licence and sell it on if you wish. There have been several court cases specifically about re-selling OEM software licences and all of them have been lost by Microsoft. As a customer in the EU you have a very explicit right ot sell licences for any and all software you own, even if it was bundled with a pre-built machine.
Windows is insurance. I love Linux and exclusively (at home) use it daily. I love the idea of open source and the unmatched flexibility that comes with it - I can customize my desktop to match my workflow to the nth degree. However, sometimes (very rarely now a days), stuff breaks and when I absolutely cannot afford to spend 30 mins troubleshooting, I reboot into Windows and basically get the job done. I do get back into Linux once the time-bound crisis is over and fix the problem, but I don't delete the Windows partition. Because Windows is insurance.
Well, it doesn't break because Linux is where I spend the lion's share of my time. So the Windows setup basically just stays almost unchanged (I'm quite careful with the software updates on Windows so that also helps).
A second Linux installation would do the same for you. The insurance is less Windows, and more having redundancy. Especially true if the situation is time critical - a default Linux installation won't stall you with a mandatory update.
For some things yes, but not for all things. I can think of 2:
For a remote interview that I had a while back over Cisco WebEx, when things didn't work on my Fedora machine immediately, I'm glad I had my wife's XPS13 with Windows as stand by. Zero time wasted, worked immediately. If that didnt work, it would have been a phone call. I really wouldn't have wanted to muck around with some other distro at that point in time, even if I disagreed with the values of the software developers in question.
For those situations where someone emails me an Excel or Word file that they would like my edits in, and I'm simply not in the position to extoll the virtues of open formats or coach them in Markdown or LaTeX, I have a Windows VM and office.
I also dual-boot because some of the games I like run on Windows better. But this is not what OP was about, OP's Linux worked well otherwise, that's why I suggested that if they had two of them, they'd have the same "insurance". So that it's not a matter of the operating system itself, but the redundancy.
@srazzaque: "For those situations where someone emails me an Excel or Word file that they would like my edits in, and I'm simply not in the position to extoll the virtues of open formats or coach them in Markdown or LaTeX, I have a Windows VM and office."
Why not get them to install LibreOffice and sent you the spreadsheet in the native format?
LibreOffice doesn’t format all Word documents the same. They’ve done an amazing job, but AFAIK, they haven’t solved every quirk. Also, if you use Excel, Calc doesn’t support everything from VBA. So esoteric VBA macros won’t work sometimes.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love for LibreOffice to become better, but having Office on a second install is also a sortove “insurance” for when LibreOffice doesn’t work 100% on old documents.
(The Office XML based file formats are a lot better here. I’m mostly talking about the old OLE-dump pre-XML formats)
> For those situations where someone emails me an Excel or Word file that they would like my edits in, and I'm simply not in the position to extoll the virtues of open formats or coach them in Markdown or LaTeX, I have a Windows VM and office.
My solution to this is that if someone sends me something that can only be opened in Word or Excel, they don't want me to look at it.
Since you enjoy tinkering with linux have you considered trying Fedora Silverblue/NixOS/Guix or the like? It's quite a steep learning curve but almost guarentees that you're never left in a bad state of configuration.
I'm of a similar mindset and in my period of using Windows as a daily driver I concluded that neither Windows or Linux was that much more unstable but it is my tinkering that causes 99% of my own problems.
I did explore installing Fedora but found its installer confusing compared to Ubuntu's installer so ended up just using Pop!_OS (which is based on Ubuntu so uses the same installer).
I love Linux and use it exclusively at home (there's a corporate macbook once a month)
The last time I booted from a rescue cd or similar would be early 2000s. I certainly wouldn't be able to "get stuff done" in windows, wouldn't know where to begin.
Those pictures make me nostalgic for the 1998-2008 era. Back when 99% of people didn't have a camera in their pocket. Having a camera/camcorder at a convention or event like this was so much different.
Not only that - Linux fanatics looking geeky, long hair, penguins. Now they look normal, where AWS t-shirts and get enough TC to retire at 30 having helped Bezos get more power.
His appearance at this event must have been just about peak ESR. I've been following his long slow slide into crank-dom on his blog, at least up until its stop last fall. I wonder what he's up to now.
In the end I do believe that some people where able to get their money back. I remember Paul-Henning Kamp (FreeBSD developer) going to court in Denmark. The court agree that you should be able to get your money back, if you didn't want Windows and didn't understand that Windows would be part of the deal. Because PHK understood that a copy of Windows would be included with his laptop, he could NOT get a refund. So you'd have to be an unsophisticated user, who wanted to install an alternative operating system, so basically "No One".
The way Microsoft dealt with the whole thing though me that they don't really care about their EULA. It's not actually enforceable or relevant to their business. If it where, not paying the refund, or forcing the OEM to seems like a way to give anyone who truly wish to violate the EULA a legal entry point.
Still, the OEM licenses was/is not worth much, and most of us knew that. You could buy a Windows 98 license for something like $30, you just had to get it with a mouse, because then it would technically have been bought with hardware. Even if the mouse was only $10, you have to assume that the real OEM where getting even better deals.
This is one reason why I build my own desktop. Not do I not have to worry about paying for an OS I don't want, but I can make sure all the components work well with that OS.
Unfortunately laptops are a whole other problem. Sure there are a few laptops that you can get with Linux pre-installed. And a few more you can get without an OS installed, but the options are pretty limited. And building your own laptop from parts is a lot more difficult.
In 2006-sih I tried to get Windows removed from my Sony Vaio. They could do it, if I sent the laptop back to the webshop, paying for it myself. There was no money to be returned to me.
I think the situation is complex, perhaps Sony paid MS for Windows (XP mediacenter), but they made money on the Norton Trial software, the trailer for movies on my desktop, and ah lot of other cruft that was not really in my interest.
It’s curious how the webpage includes a changelog in the footer. Wonder what the web would look like if built from the ground up to be versioned in this manner.
I tried doing that sometime in mid or maybe late 2000's. The manufacturer said I'd have to return the hard disk (on which the system was technically installed, on some shadow partition) and pay for the replacement cost of the disk with an amount that's surprisingly close to the cost of the license that would be returned to me (netting me ~0). Being a teenager I just stopped there.
Years ago Microsoft had some sort of Internet access plan monthly and you received a free computer. A court nullified it and I was able to keep the eMachine computer for free. I can't remember the specifics but I had at least two free computers from it.
The link for the Tux from linuxmall-dot-com still works, except their cart does not. The front page is full of... well what was cutting edge amateur tech around that time. What I want to know is: who has been paying for hosting for linuxmall-dot-com for two+ decades?
Microsoft had contracts with all of the OEMs, if an OEM wanted Microsoft's OEM pricing, they needed to pay for a Windows License with every PC they sold.
Buying a PC without Windows meant buying parts and assembling it yourself. Wasn't too difficult, but you were SOL if you wanted a laptop.
Yes and no. Name brand computers tended to come with Windows. But there was a printed monthly magazine called the Computer Shopper that had ads for mail-order stuff of every possible description, and you could buy a motherboard plus the rest of the pieces without Windows.
Right about that time period, copy protection of the Windows CD's was altering the equation.
Yeah, most of the big online ordering sites (Dell, Gateway, etc) would only let you get a copy with Windows. It was a huge deal when Dell started letting you buy "naked" PCs.
I was there too, although I didn't make it into any of the pictures AFAICT on the site. Everex computer (which was in Fremont) also refused to refund any money for "returning" the license code.
I read this and remembered how much I used to^W^W hate Microsoft. Microsoft intentionally did not fix the virus vectors in their software. They could have easily stopped 99% of viruses with these steps:
1. Make Windows ignore autorun.ini on writable media. -- When a user double-clicks on a drive that has a hidden autorun.ini file, Windows executes the binary referenced in the file. This is how most Windows viruses spread.
2. Disable automatic execution of scripts in Microsoft Office documents. -- Microsoft Office supported normal documents (DOC & XLS) and template files that can contain scripts (DOT & XLT). One could rename a .DOT file to a .DOC and MS Word would open like a .DOC file, and then silently execute the macros contained in it. This is how most Microsoft Office viruses spread. Since most users never use macros, Microsoft could have easily disabled the function by default and provided a config option to enable it. Additionally, Office could refuse to open template files that have a non-template file extension. And finally, it could prompt or simply refuse to execute macros from removable media.
3. Require PC makers to turn off the floppy boot option on new PCs. -- Nearly all PCs were sold with their BIOS settings configured to automatically boot from the floppy drive if one is present and has the right boot data on it. If someone turned their computer on while an infected floppy was in the drive, their computer would get the virus. Microsoft could have easily required PC makers to turn off the floppy boot option on new PCs. This would make the computers start up faster and stop an entire class of viruses. Microsoft could have gone further and made Windows refuse to start after booting from a floppy. Users would quickly develop the habit of removing floppies before turning on their computers.
But Microsoft made a lot of extra money because of viruses. When a person's computer got viruses, it would slow down or corrupt files. Many folks would go out and buy a new computer, paying for new licenses of Windows and Office.
Viruses harmed so many businesses in the developing world, keeping poor countries poor. I lived in Ghana when I was a teenager. I did some PC technician work and saw the impact of Microsoft viruses first-hand.
Microsoft really cheated the World out of a lot of economic growth and quality of life.
The IT media (PC Magazine, PC World, etc) turned a blind eye to it. They didn't have the integrity to go against their big ad buyers, the anti-virus companies. Nobody with an audience would hold Microsoft accountable.
Back then it was Microsoft; now it's Google & Facebook. Companies continue to exploit because US social structure has not progressed.
I tried to return a MS development kit in about 2000, took it back to the vendor and said I never accepted the license and wanted a full refund.
They laughed at me.
Have you tried reaching out to Dell on the chat? We buy the Precision laptops in Switzerland, and there's a number of keyboard options (including US)[0]. I checked Dell UK for a similar device [1] but they only have German, UK or French listed.
Drivers are much better now and many large companies supply their own drivers (though frustratingly often as binaries).
Some companies like Dell offer Linux specific SKUs with somewhat tuned drivers.
There are companies making Linux first desktops. Linux first servers are extremely common. There is a lot of hardware not just shipping with Linux but designed for Linux first.
It's a world better now than it was in the mid-late 90s.
I think it was meant in regards to refunding the Windowx tax or buying computers with Linux preinstalled universally.
Some like Lenovo were giving customers very hard time in getting a refund. And only very recently they started offering Linux preinstalled on some of their models for regular users.
Some things like you mentioned above are of course much better today. But Windows tax situation is still a mess.
In regards to lock-in, both MS and Apple can be quite irritating (DirectX / Metal instead of backing Vulkan are glaring examples). But Apple seems to be worse overall, they are more like MS from the '90s in their lock-in obsession.
MS did some positive things recently. Like freed up exfat for Linux to use. But when it comes to gaming for example, MS are still pretty unfriendly in their old ways.
> Is windows better or worse than macs/osx with Linux hostility? To me, it seems like Microsoft is less bad than Apple in this regard.
I'm not sure what you mean.
Personally I like the Mac because it lets me run Unix stuff in a no BS way from the command line. It also runs Docker fine (haven't tried it on the M1).
It doesn't have something like WSL, but it doesn't really need it because you can compile most things for the MacOS command line.
Windows needs to run Linux well because it isn't Unix. The Mac is BSD Unix.
I mean that you can't buy a computer with mac hardware and linux os. Microsoft isn't forcing hardware vendors to only use windows.
Osx unix is still vastly different from most production environments. I really like wsl because I can use whatever linux os that I'm comfortable with and have access to a wide range of supported apps on windows. It seems really elegant to me and its not just running a linux vm on windows like most assume. The integration between wsl and windows is pretty neat. e.g. this is in my .bashrc in wsl, it copies output to my windows clipboard (and note that its a windows exe that im invoking from wsl).
function cb () {
powershell.exe -command "\$input | set-clipboard"
}
I’ve done Django on MacOS, run Kubernetes Klusters, done Java Spring, Ruby, MySQL, Postgresql, MongoDB, Express.js, Koa, etc etc etc.
The MacOS shell is different from production Linux. So is WSL, so is whatever version of Linux you are running at home. If you want to mirror a product environment perfectly, you use Docker. Otherwise, most people aren’t going to see big differences.
You can tell how angry and righteous the author felt because they steadfastly spell "Microsoft" and "Windows" in lowercase.
That said, I don't blame them for being angry about having to pay for an OS license they don't want. I'd be angry too if I bought an Intel NUC and $50 of the price went to Apple for a MacOS license.
I don't agree with them but I really miss the innocence, novelty of the internet, the spirit of the 90s that these photos and their protest represents. Nobody screaming with phones out filming each other, hive mind duking it out on Twitter with memes or Youtubers "exposing" each other, etc.
I can. If companies want to profit by being a middle-man between the OS developers and the consumer, then they also inherit the responsibility of actually dealing with said consumer. If Microsoft wants to be a pain in their arse and make it harder for them to actually fulfil their obligations as a merchant, maybe they should stop doing business deals with a company that's actively hostile to them.
It's the same thing as tech stores that try to foist you over the the hardware manufacturer if you buy a faulty component from them. You don't get to put your fingers in the pie and then claim that you have no responsibility to ensure the quality of an item you're advertising and selling.