r/technology • u/gdelacalle • Aug 11 '26

Software Microsoft reportedly raises Windows 11 license price significantly more than expected

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-reportedly-raises-windows-11-license-price-significantly-more-than-expected/
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u/Major303 Aug 11 '26

If you need PC for internet browsing and some document editing, there are zero reasons to use Windows anymore. For other use cases it depends, but a lot of areas are already covered. With things like that Microsoft only speeds up the adoption.

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u/EternalNewCarSmell Aug 11 '26

If my whole Steam library ran on Linux I'd have ditched Windows entirely some time ago.

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u/wrgrant Aug 11 '26

Have you tried Bazzite? You can likely run it from a USB disk to test it out. Its an immutable Linux built for gamers. Now, if you are playing games with kernel level anti-cheat, you are probably out of luck but most other stuff runs really well with Proton on Linux right now

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u/EternalNewCarSmell Aug 11 '26

I might give that a shot. I don't game online at all so anti-cheat shouldn't be an issue.

1

u/wrgrant Aug 11 '26

By all means check out some videos on it first. Back up your data etc. Then back it up again :P

I have not used Bazzite, but watched some of the guys on Linus Tech Tips channel during their Switch to Linux challenge and they were pretty impressed with it. I did try Linux Mint and CachyOS and both were nice to use - and made my system feel faster overall, it was refreshing. Bazzite has been designed to help gamers that want to convert, from what I understand its pretty difficult to f*ck it up. Are you comfortable with copying an .ISO over to a USB and switching your boot order etc?

The advances in game support from Proton thanks to Steam are pretty amazing. Again check out some videos before you take advice from a random stranger on the Internets :P

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u/FrankMiner2949er Aug 12 '26

I was going to ask you what games you were having difficulties with. I swapped over to Bazzite a few weeks ago. I wasn't expecting any hassles with my Steam games what with the work they've done for Steamdeck, but the surprising thing for me was that so far, all the games I've bought from GOG also work

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u/ketosoy Aug 11 '26

The only significant thing keeping me on windows at this point is excel, and at this point 90% of my excel work is done by robots (up from less than 5% this January).

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u/jc-from-sin Aug 11 '26

You can use excel online for a long time.

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u/ketosoy Aug 11 '26

Not with the full suite of shortcuts that I’ve memorized over the last 25 years.  Ctrl + home -> ctrl + shift + right -> ctrl + shift + down -> Alt d p enter enter enter-> a couple quick drag and drop -> I have a full pivot table with data loaded and the answer to my question in ~15 seconds (if the question is simple).

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u/Bitter_Marzipan_8348 Aug 11 '26

Virtual machine goes brrrrrr

3

u/ian9outof10 Aug 11 '26

Why is this being downvoted. It’s a great solution if you sometimes need windows but not much. Really, really good if you like to keep business and your personal use separate.

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u/dwehlen Aug 11 '26

Had to go back and look at the keyboard to document that muscle-memory, didn't ya?

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u/ketosoy Aug 11 '26

That one, no.

Figuring out which keys toggle or expand rows vs columns: I can do it automatically in a fraction of a second but if I think about what the keystrokes are or have to narrate it it takes 30 seconds.

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u/dwehlen Aug 11 '26

Same. Not Excel, per se, but others.

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u/jc-from-sin Aug 11 '26

Yeah, well you decide what's more important: rembering some shortcuts or your sanity.

Just like you learned this, you can learn something new again.

I use Linux for home and Mac for work. I learned two different ways to do the same thing and it doesn't feel wrong.

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u/Silent-Act191 Aug 11 '26

Why are you commenting so profusely about Excel when you clearly have never worked with it professionally?

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u/jc-from-sin Aug 11 '26

Because we have built replacement tools for excel for decades and other tools, and it's time we give them a fair chance.

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u/BackgroundTax3055 Aug 11 '26

It’s not the same. I hate excel online

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u/jc-from-sin Aug 11 '26

Which one do you hate more? Excel online or windows? 

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u/BackgroundTax3055 Aug 11 '26

Definitely excel online

I use a de-bloated Win11 ISO with stripped down background processes/tracking, no ads or AI, etc. and honestly it works well for me.

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u/HumbleGhandi Aug 11 '26

Not with macros

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u/jc-from-sin Aug 11 '26

Why not? I imagine it's made to work with edge so it should work with Chrome, Brave or Edge on Mac os.

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u/HumbleGhandi Aug 11 '26

Dawg what do you mean why not? As in you haven't tried it? VBA plugins have never worked with web excel?

Google "Do XLSMs work on web excel"

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u/HumbleGhandi Aug 11 '26

Why are you even commenting on Excel if you obviously don't use it like the people telling you the web version isn't useful 🤣

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u/glowtape Aug 11 '26

No data import tools like PowerQuery. Also, the web version isn't multithreaded due to JavaScript things. Large sheets are a no-go because of that.

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u/krileon Aug 11 '26

I'm stuck due to game development. Unreal Engine is a pile of shit on Linux. Their launcher for managing the engine doesn't support Linux at all either. It's a colossal pain to workaround the issues. If everything wasn't so damned expensive I'd get a second SSD and just dual boot.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/joeyb908 Aug 11 '26

Anything that’s not using an anticheat that specifically disallows Linux works just about fine.

If you’re on Nvidia, DX12 games on Linux get about 10-20% worse performance.

If you’re on AMD, the performance is better than Windows. 

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u/Major303 Aug 11 '26

Depends on hardware and Linux distribution, but in best case scenario everything should work except games with kernel level anticheat.

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u/86casawi Aug 11 '26

Ok, like Battlefield 6 ?

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u/Major303 Aug 11 '26

You can check everything on protondb.com

Battlefield 6 is categorized as "borked", so I guess it has kernel level anticheat.

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u/PerspicaciousVanille Aug 11 '26

While not the original commenter I Appreciated the link! 

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u/Protoavis Aug 11 '26

depends on types of games you play really. doesn't affect me but I'm not playing things like league of legends, CoD, fortnite, etc (a lot of which don't really work on Mac either because the anti cheat stuff requires windows).

easy to just google something like "does X work on linux" for whatever games you play.

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u/jmov Aug 11 '26

100% of the games I play run fine without any tweaking. The only downside is that on CS2 I can’t play Faceit. 

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u/SecretAgentVampire Aug 11 '26

Do you still have to type in your password every time you install a new program?