alt Hacker News>I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore.
i agree with most of what you said, but this is borderline fantasy.
the majority of home market share is not guaranteed, sure. with how good gaming is on non-windows machines now, there isnt much for a home user to get locked-in with (except games that require windows-only malware i.e. anticheat)
but government, institution (hospitals, universities, etc.) and large non-tech enterprise? that will be windows for at least 20 more years even if they started to change everything now (which they arent). and the number of machines in those places absolutely dwarfs the number of home installs.
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Large parts of one german state switched to open source. First they laughed at them and now they are envious.
The switch to Linux is happening this year. Until the end of the year they want all workers on Linux instead of Windows.
It is possible, and fast if you want it.
I agree with this. At this point, Windows is like COBOL.
> with how good gaming is on non-windows machines now, there isn't much for a home user to get locked-in with
The options for the average user are not linux or windows, but only macOS or Windows. Gaming is abysmal on macOS on any of the current hardware.
That said, I agree with you that there's less-and-less gaming lock-in on windows, but that's because the majority of gamers are gaming on iOS and android.
Decline often happens slowly, gradually and then suddenly. Could anybody imagine Intel where it is now ? This could happen to Microsoft and is probably already happening as we speak.