People who are only now up in arms about Gates shedding hypocrisy on the climate crisis should look into the long history of abuses Microsoft have made on their way to near-monopoly, including the times when they lobbied and bribed governments, including here in Europe, to lock them and the educational systems into the Microsoft ecosystem. Instead of authorities saving money with Linux and FOSS in general, they spent public money on Windows and Office licenses! (Don’t get me started about how they shouldn’t have even been the benchmark for ECDL courses; having ECDL done should mean one can figure out how to use, say, a simple Linux distribution.)

It’s worth it for something more important than as a protest - it means ending Europe’s dependence on Silicon Valley. And in this, every PC switch matters.

(not to mention it’s a pretty good OS - and it’s only going to get better if we make it part of the European autonomy strategy and give it the support it deserves)

Personally, I don’t think switching your OS “as a protest” is a good idea. Bill Gates is so obscenely wealthy that your protest will have literally zero impact. Not “very small” impact; actually zero. As in, the whole world could abandon all Microsoft products and Bill Gates would still be able to live exactly as he did before. It’s not worth your mental health to let his actions have that level of control over you.

All that said, you should switch to Linux because it’s a better OS (as long as it does what you need).

They still profit. Windows is increasingly an ad platform with ads delivered directly to your start menu.

You also get included in their user statistics when they report such things publicy, and therefore help toward selling their value as an investment.

ZorinOS, stylish, modern and user-friendly check it out!

💔

i just installed mint on my laptop and it runs way better than it ever ran with windows 11 plus it’s super user friendly :)

Linux is worth it as the greatest protest to everything that is wrong with technology.

The secret word is “telemetrics”. Microsoft will track your actions and sells the data, just like Google or Apple.

The amount of data Windows and microsoft in general collect is worth billions and going straight to the hands of the US govt. for a price obviously, so yes they are profiting from your use regardless of whether you pay for it or not.

During a public talk at the University of Washington in 1998, Microsoft founder Bill Gates admitted, “Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don’t pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

Source

Not necessarily as a protest, but the answer is always hard yes.

The way I see it, using these software, even without paying anything and even if you could somehow shield your data from telemetry, strengthens their hegemony.

Growing the pool of users in Open Source project, talking about them, maybe filing bug reports if needed, helps make them more viable. The growing user count makes developers more enticed to release software for these platforms.

I don’t think Microsoft’s hegemony suffers a lot from losing a user … But they do suffer slightly more from Linux gaining a user.

Windows is not making money on sales only. They collect data and then they sell them to data brokers. Those brokers then sell the data to advertisement agencies to serve you adds. Even if you buy just one item based on those adds (which may be unconscious choice) you have already paid. Even if you buy nothing based on adds, microsoft already got the money.

I do recommend linux but be aware of letting people to push you into something you don’t want to do. Linux community can be very enthusiastic 😅. Top three to recommend are Linux Mint (most windows like design), Fedora (most stable) and Pop OS (best with nvidia gpu). Only one of these is favorite of mine but I will not tell you which, just search for them, look at screenshots and you will see what suits you.

It is worth installing GNU/Linux.