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Comment by devjab | Hacker News Reader

I’m a little split on it. I don’t actually mind their streamlining because of the way I windows. Which is professionally and for video games. I wouldn’t use windows professionally if I had a choice (company policy, and one I get from an ops perspective), but at least every setting is taken care for me. I wouldn’t really use windows for video games either, but the fact that they are removing more and more of the “use windows” part means that my only windows machine is basically just a console at this point with how little I have to interact with it.

I do understand where you’re coming from. Which is the flip side of it, but what I don’t understand is why anyone really wants to use Windows in 2024. I’m not a huge fan of the direction Apple is going with their continuous platform lockin, but the smallest MacBook Air is cheap and works better than anything that runs windows. Similarly Chromebooks are actually just fine, ok maybe not outside the context of windows/macos/chromeos. I chose the Apple lock-in because my families likes iOS, but I would have been fine with Google.

If you like to tinker and own your OS there is still Linux.

Professionally I think Microsoft is doing fine. They have a functional monopoly on enterprise organisations, especially the 99% (citation = made up) which aren’t tech related. So it’s probably a decent enough strategy for them. Hell, I think the primary reason they don’t have a cheap device to compete with MacBook airs and Chromebooks is because they know windows would lose.

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> what I don’t understand is why anyone really wants to use Windows in 2024.

Because I'm Windows power user (30+ years of experience) and novice on MacOS and Linux? Doesn't that count for something? It's not that alternative OSes are terrible, they're just terrible for me. I use shortcuts without thinking, I use TotalCommander all the time and no, there are no 100% replacements that I can just install and continue using with all shortcuts I'm used to. I use Home/End/PgDown/PgUp all the time, and not only that MacBook doesn't have these, it doesn't even have Delete key (opposite of backspace), which I find mind-boggling.

Sorry about little rant. I'm sure people are very productive using MacOS or Linux. But I'm super productive on Windows, everything just flies without thinking. Oh, btw. I'm typing this on MacBook which is a wonderful piece of hardware, and I use it a lot, but even after a year I feel like my hands are tied behind my back when working on it.

I think it's ok for a guy to have his preferences without been judged by his fellow developers. I though we're behind judging for personal preferences in 2024?

Same, I have been on Windows for over two decades. Now I'm migrating away. M$ pretty much broke every good things that were rock solid before.Just like you, there are something I don't have an alternative yet, so still have to hang on a bit, but I feel I might just have to bite the bullet and ditch it.

The issue with that argument is Windows keeps depreciating existing functionality so old experience is worthless fairly quickly. Nobody has decades of expertise with Windows 11, at this point with how little Windows 3.11 experience still applies. Remember .ini files? Yea how relevant is that today? How about using a DOS prompt recently?

Remember .ini files? Yea how relevant is that today?

AFAIK there's nothing stopping you from writing software that pulls config info from an ini file. Has something changed?

Edit: I think I've edited ini files to configure video games somewhat recently.

How about using a DOS prompt recently?

I host my command prompt inside a 3rd party program, but I still use the Windows command prompt all the time. I think that's pretty normal for "power users" who haven't moved on to PowerShell (I use PS when I have to, but it's not my go-to).

> writing software that pulls config info from an ini file.

You can write a Linux program that pulls from an INI file or a 3rd party DOS program on MacOS, the question is how this stuff is relevant to being a power Windows user.

You can write a Linux program that pulls from an INI file

What's the API for that look like? In Win32 it's GetPrivateProfileString.

the question is how this stuff is relevant to being a power Windows user.

I gave you an example. I guess you're not aware that many desktop applications continue to support ini files, even if it's not the first line of configuration anymore.

I am well aware of INI files being used by applications on several operating systems. DotNet Core may not be the most popular platform but it’s blurred the lines here.

DOS has similarly been stripped from Windows but 3rd party DOS shells exist on many platforms. Honestly knowing Bash is more Windows specific at this point than DOS. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

So again, none of your examples are Windows specific at this point.

DOS has similarly been stripped from Windows but 3rd party DOS shells exist on many platforms

Huh? DOS != Command line interpreter or shell. DOS per se hasn't existed for decades, but the command line (Command Prompt) lives on, using pretty much the same syntax.

Honestly knowing Bash is more Windows specific at this point than DOS.

Bash is more Windows-specific than "DOS"?! That makes no sense whatsoever.

I am well aware of INI files being used by applications on several operating systems.

What are you even talking about now? You started the whole ini discussion with "Remember .ini files? Yea how relevant is that today?" So it went from irrelevant to relevant across platforms?

> Huh?

On windows 11 using Microsoft only tools you can list every file in a directory using ls or dir. But Bash is by far a more powerful tool than command prompt making it far more relevant for a power user than some legacy syntax.

> So it went from irrelevant to relevant across platforms?

The point INI files and DOS come up but aren’t some Windows specific knowledge at this point.

> How about using a DOS prompt recently?

There's no DOS prompt of course, but I use the command prompt almost every working day. I have started using wsl bash more and more though.

Also: it's hardly improved significantly over the past 25 years! It's as rubbish as ever. If attempting to make the argument that Windows is changing stuff all the time, the command prompt really is the oddest thing to point at.

Linux is doing the same thing with systemd infecting every part of the stack and changing the interfaces and config files “for the better”.

systems evolve. systemd is nearly fifteen years old and is not hard to use, and it is better than the myriad systems it replaced. that's why it won

this is very much not the same thing especially since you can still find non systemd distros but really, systemd is neither a new nor abrupt nor unilateral change

Linux is not "doing the same thing" except inasmuch that everything that doesn't die changes over time

> I use Home/End/PgDown/PgUp all the time, and not only that MacBook doesn't have these, it doesn't even have Delete key (opposite of backspace), which I find mind-boggling

Fn + Delete, deletes forwards

Command + arrow keys moves cursor to beginning/end of paragraph/doc. Option jumps by word. And you can combine them with Shift for selection.

Spacebar scrolls a full page.

If you want the actual Home/End/PgDown/PgUp you can get them by combining Fn with arrow or F keys, depending on your keyboard, but I never use them.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102650

I said I'm MacOs novice, but I'm not that green, of course I immediately searched for shortcuts. And these are not a replacement for a single key, especially since I'm often combining these keys with Ctrl and Shift. At least on Windows where I'm doing real productive work.

Just trying to be helpful. Can’t tell how green someone is a priori.

Sure, thanks! It might help someone. After all, there are new refugees from Windows every day now.

I can sort of understand this sentiment. I question how much of that experience translates past 10 years or so. There is also the issue of windows simply being wildly unstable for me. I am also a long time windows user. Every 6 months or so my windows install destroys itself. I've never had this happen on my Mac & Linux has not failed me like this in over ten years. At this point, I only use windows to play games with old friends, and it still manages to self destruct with minimal software installed.

I have the exact same experience with the Linux desktop. At some random point, it simply caves into itself and something very trivial such as sound or Bluetooth simply breaks beyond repair. It's happened so many times that I've stopped trying it. "A Linux evening" is no longer fun or interesting to me.

https://fabiensanglard.net/a_linux_evening/

Incidentally, my Windows installations never self destruct, and I have used the product on several versions in the last 25+ years (since W95). My Linux installations however have, for example by standard updates.

What if you plug lets say typical Logitech external keyboard, MacOS literally doesn't support those functionalities? (Windows guy for 30 years too without any Apple experience, the productivity I can get on filesystem stuff just with Total commander compared to literally everybody else in the office is quite something)

Apple's own external keyboard has these missing keys, so I assume they work as on Windows. But they're not available on MacBook keyboard. Truth to be told, Home/End/PgUp/PgDown are also not available on many new Win laptops, but at least separate Delete is always there. And there"s choice, you can always pick up ThinkPad if it's important.

That was just one example of why I don't feel at home on Mac. But TotalCommander must be #1 thing I miss. I investigated several Mac file managers, settled for Crax Commander, but I'm so spoilled by TC that nothing comes close.

Because I manage Windows based servers that run various business applications. And as it happens, when things go wrong, you want to be able to see all settings and options, not just three options that don’t help you. And don’t even get me stared about netsh…

I failed to mention in the initial comment that I am refferring to Windows Server, but I got triggered by “we’re removing the lasr useful bits of Windows configuration options”.

Can you expand on what they removed from Windows server? Removing options for normal users is one thing, but for sysadmins is another thing

Windows Server 2016 onwards: updates are all or nothing.

The default is the new settings app and you have to be very persistent if you want Control Panel options. Everything is oversimplified and dumbed down.

My example with network settings: Removing useful admin info for no reason.

The assertion that Linux needs tinkering to use is absurd. Fedora, for example, works great out of the box. Some people may choose to change a few settings in a GUI but that isn't tinkering in the way that I think that you mean it and it certainly isn't unique to Linux.

I used to feel this way but having installed Ubuntu on a friend's old laptop for him, it's crazy the amount of stuff you forget you do because it's second nature. I certainly think it's too far to say "absurd".

Installing codecs, drivers (several times by different guides usually) and disabling Red Hat telemetry from command line is what user have to do to make it usable for something more than running neofetch

Since we are comparing to Windows, the "disabling Red Hat telemetry from command line" step doesn't really count, since Windows out of the box is loaded with telemetry.

Windows is practically spyware now, all they're doing with the platform is enshittification. WSL was the last "good" windows feature and it's just an Embrace Extend Extinguish play.

I have to disagree to a limited extent. I recently tried to boot multiple current Linux distros from a USB stick for evaluation and all of them had issues. Fedora wasn't usable at all due to lack of space because it lost the RAM partition in the boot process and had severe graphical glitches. Ubuntu had issues with the Intel iGPU and installing drivers for the dGPU isn't possible in a live boot without persistence (and Ubuntu showed a blank error message when using the GUI for switching drivers). It also somehow managed to trigger secure boot so that I had to use a recovery key to get my data back. Zorin can download Nvidia drivers during boot and thus worked decently but the system would randomly freeze and had graphical artifacts when using the desktop cube. There were also other issues on Ubuntu and Zorin like with the permissions for bubble wrap to make Flatpaks work and so on. If it already requires tinkering before installing or with a completely fresh OS, then I find it hard to believe that desktop Linux can be a daily driver.

Not sure what hardware you are doing this on, but installing Fedora 40 on my mid-range gaming PC from 2022 last month got me flickering windows (it only ships with a Wayland session) and broken sound out of the box. My screens still don't both turn on when I wake it up from sleep, if it does.

If that is outside of "absurd" to you then the Linux desktop world clearly needs to keep cooking a little longer. My non-IT friends would not have been able to figure this out and I don't think they should have to.

Up until a year or so ago, windows wouldn’t recognize the webcam of my hp-recommends-windows laptop.

On a different laptop, it refused to output 4k@60 through the HP dock. After it started working, waking from sleep would be a coin toss whether I would get any image at all, or something garbled.

I’m “IT” and had no idea how to fix these. Even installing all the provided oem drivers made no difference.

A new development is Windows using the us English layout, although it’s not enabled. I have to add and remove it to fix it.

Everything worked perfectly on Linux since day 1.

Sounds more like a HP issue than a Windows issue to me.

How's it different from meibo's post? If the hardware is well supported by the OS, everything works fine. If it's not, you're gonna have a bad time.

My point is that you can't say Xos is great because it works well on this particular hardware.

Windows machines have the benefit of official Windows support where the integrator worked out the kinks and built-in a bunch of hacks to fix whatever half-broken things the manufacturer cobbled together. Linux machines don't usually have such affordances, you just install it on a random _Windows_ machine and hope it works. It's actually amazing it works well 90% of the time.

I spent a solid 2 days trying to get Ubuntu Server working on a WRX80 threadripper machine. Never once saw the actual installation process.

Day 3, I grab an image of windows server 2022. It boots instantly to the install process and just works.

I know you can make Linux work, but the amount of suffering is still unbelievable compared to the alternatives in many cases. By the time I get the Linux thing figured out, I'll have forgotten about what it was I wanted to originally build.

I wouldn't mind a bit of tinkering, but this is sad. I happily pay Microsoft if this is the alternative.

This is such MS propaganda I'm flabbergasted. Windows is a joke OS at present day.

How has your experience been installing Linux on the platform I described?

The double standards when discussing Linux are ridiculous, every issue people have with Linux must be because they're incompetent and using windows must mean you're fighting the OS every second

It's not a double standard but the simple truth.

It is true, if you are having a problem with Linux 9 time out of 10 it's possible it fix the problem, aka, you are the problem.

My limited experience with paying for an OS means if there's a problem your just out of luck.

> you are the problem.

I wonder if Linux advocates could take a small amount of ownership over the user/customer experience instead of projecting all flaws upon the user. It's an operating system. Most people aren't interested in making it their hobby or full time job.

> ”you are the problem”

This is so true. Whenever the power is out, my neighbors are all outside complaining, ”the power grid doesn’t work!!”

I try to tell them, if your power goes out and you can’t build your own wind turbine, maybe the power grid isn’t the problem.

I use Linux mint at home. It usually works great, but it definitely needs tinkering to keep the system working.

Just in the last few months:

- My nvidia drivers stopped working because the drivers I had (which didn’t auto update) apparently weren’t kept up to date with the kernel (which had auto updates enabled).

- My computer wouldn’t boot at all last week after I disconnected an external usb drive running zfs. It showed the logo and just kind of stalled out. I had to use a recovery grub setting to disable zfs from the boot process.

This sort of routine breakage is pretty common. My rodecaster doesn’t have all its audio interfaces show up in the default audio devices list. HDMI audio broke last year from a kernel update. IntelliJ stopped scaling according to the HiDPI mode I have set up. And so on. It’s fine. It’s worth it for me. But it’s definitely less reliable than macOS or windows.

> This sort of routine breakage is pretty common.

Yes, the free OS is occasionally worse than the trillion dollar companies product.

For this audience these are inconveniences. For others it’s unusable.

OTOH windows OSes autosuicide themselves.

On my works laptop I had initially kept the corporate windows install on the original drive and installed Fedora on a second non drive.

I would fire up the windows machine once every other week for a few hours so it gets its updates. But every single time I would enter the firmware settings or boot Fedora the OS bootlocker would lock itself and force me to go to https://aka.ms/recoverykey to get a recovery key the next time I booted windows. Until one day it started not booting even after giving the correct key. Bitlocker basically bricked itself.

So don't tell me that windows is more usable. And this is even without tackling the non functionning parts of windows when it accepts to boot, like the broken keyboard for anyone not using english language that Microsoft never even tried to fix in more than 30 years. People used to laugh about a sliding date for linux to be "read for thr desktop" but windows has never been ready either.

I agree with your sentiment and I use Linux religiously too. Respect it for what it has accomplished and continues to. Most of my friends don't care. They're into productivity more than passion for computing in general. They don't care one way or another. Tomorrow if there's another proprietary OS that makes their work easier they'll easily pay for that OS and move on. Just saying that our sentiment isn't shared by everyone.

It’s not free when it’s costing me time.

A licensed copy of the most feature-packed Windows Server Datacenter edition will run you ~$6k (16 core license).

Now, assume your hourly consulting rate is $200. You would only have to spend about 40 hours of time tinkering on linux before windows would have made more sense for the time/money equation.

Frustration is another economy that I think is even more important for getting things done. How badly do you actually want to build? Maintaining morale through the hard bits of the target problem domain is usually already a struggle. Why do you want to be fighting with boot loaders, drivers and arguments on various forums on top of all of that?

A licensed copy of the most feature-packed Windows Server Datacenter edition will run you ~$6k (16 core license).

Kind of a weird basis for comparison when everyone seems to be talking about the desktop experience.

I love Linux for servers, but not for the desktop.

I agree. But to continue the point - even if I wanted to spend 40 gross hours of billable time at $200/hr for a single installation of a server OS, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's the right OS for the goal I'm trying to accomplish, no matter how bad or excellent the configuration experience happens to be.

Conversations about the utility, costs, and feature sets of Windows vs. Linux. vs. macOS tend to ignore the reality that business conditions often dictate that you must use one or the other for a given use case. Sometimes you do have the option, and if you've already got an appreciable investment in one, then you tend to select for that one almost by default.

That's not how "free" works at all...

Free just means it did not cost you any money, a free hammer does not also imply a free new roof or whatever you want to build with it.

Linux is a tool, men use tools, be a man and use Linux.

Needlessly gendered, and the last sentence reads as rather condescending.

I've spent more hours over the past decade wrestling with Windows than with Linux. So not only is Windows costing me money to license it, it's also costing me more time than chucking it in the bin and using Linux. I'm so done with Windows.

Meh, this looks like a YMMV kinda situation. I never had to "tinker" with anything since I installed Arch on the machine on which I'm typing this, almost four years ago.

Last week I reinstalled Windows on my work machine because the TPM was reset because I opened the case and all the MS account thingies got borked beyond repair.

Now there are a bunch of borken things. Like icons randomly disappearing in the taskbar (the button is still there and functional, but no icon). And every other time I boot it, something messes up the input language settings. It gets set to US English, although that layout doesn't show up in the enabled languages in the settings app. I have to add it and remove it to unbreak this.

And then there's my gaming box, which worked OK for a few months, but now something happened with the BitLocker screen and there's no more text, just the blue screen. If I type in my pin, it actually works.

Installing Arch is one big tinker session. The install instructions have “To verify the boot mode, check the UEFI bitness” as one of the first steps.

There's a thousand of graphical frontend installer for Arch and Arch-derivatives, like cachyOS, endeavour, etc. Hell, it even has an archinstall script nowadays. I installed it a couple times by hand for fun but if you want a rolling-release Linux distro that uses pacman there are many ways as easy as Ubuntu

Maybe you are using the incorrect distro model for you and would benefit of a slower release distro?

I am fine with fedora on my main and professional laptop because they are used almost daily and then are kept updated regularly. And honestly I had one small breakage in 10 years and I could just boot with the previously installed kernel for a week until the problem was fixed so it wasn't that big of a deal.

I have another computer that serve as a streaming box in my leaving room connected to my video projector. I use this one much less frequently, especially in summer so I don't want to have to spend a lot of time doing updates. For this one I decided to install almalinux. Since it is a very long term support distro it only receive security updates and major bug fixes so it is very reliable, the kernel version is well tested and the frequency of system update is very low.

In the past, people would have complained these distro were lacking important newer versions for their own usage and needs. This is not an issue anymore with flatpaks, container tools, distrobox, VMs + that trend of dev/devopa software installed on your homedir directly via curl | bash or some versions manager like nvm, sdkman, pyenv. Nowadays you can use the very latest versions of software on top of a dinosaur.

Maybe. But personally, I hate running all my actual software in docker or a VM. It chews through drive space, slows down IO, and it makes sharing files around a headache. (Like, run tool X on directory Y - oh, oops - the tool and the data are in different containers. Ugh what was the command to fix that?).

I'd much rather a "native" linux distro that has a reasonably modern kernel, with support for io_uring and recent nvidia drivers. And I want a good, modern window manager with hidpi support. And I need to be able to install modern compilers, toolchains and software - like rustc, intellij, nodejs, spotify, firefox, davinci resolve, zfs, automatic1111 and so on.

Maybe these problems wouldn't show up as much with another distro? But if I spend time distro shopping to avoid tinkering with mint, I'm worried I'll end up wasting more time doing that than I would save. Most of the bugs I've run into with mint are actually bugs in ubuntu, that mint is based on. Is fedora / arch / etc really more stable than ubuntu? If I use a dinosaur, I'm worried I'll then need to work around its issues - can I easily install modern lldb on an old distro with an ancient glibc? I've tried that before, and it was a huge headache.

> Is fedora / arch / etc really more stable than ubuntu?

Can't give you a definite answer on that, I am quite happy with Fedora but only using ZFS on my almalinux and freebsd system and my only experience with Ubuntu in recent years were LTS releases on servers and that was pre v20.

I remember that the kernel changed something a few years ago that broke openzfs and it took time to get back support on some distros so I would be afraid the kernel break something and force me to avoid kernel security upgrades while it is worked on if I was relying on it on a Fedora.

I believe running nvidia hardware and ZFS, or anything that is not using a driver included in the mainline kernel, is unsuitable for a distro running fairly recent kernels if you care about potential breakage. That is what LTS distro are for.

One alternative to super bleeding edge distro such as Arch is to use something like opensuse slowroll which is a kind of hybrid model between standard and rolling release. Every month or so it gets an upgrade to the lastest snapshot from the OpenSuse Tumbleweed rolling release and between each snapshot it only gets security updates correcting major bugs or CVEs. I only have used it for a few weeks in a VM but I guess if a major breakage would impact tumbleweed you would continue getting security updates until tumbleweed is fixed. But I have no idea if OpenSuse is an openzfs friendly shop, I think they are full on btrfs adoption instead.

> If I use a dinosaur, I'm worried I'll then need to work around its issues - can I easily install modern lldb on an old distro with an ancient glibc? I've tried that before, and it was a huge headache.

When I say a dinosaur, I was exagerating. For example all the toolchains and software you mention in your posts are perfectly usable on a long term distro such as almalinux 9. I can't speak about nvidia because I don't have any machine with it but Almalinux is a better proposal for openzfs. Nodejs is easily installed through nvm, I am using the most recent firefox, librewolf and ungoogled chrommum from the flatpaks, etc. It is not using an old glibc.

Apparently lldb is part of almalinux 9 but I have no idea if the version is modern enough for your use case: https://almalinux.pkgs.org/9/almalinux-appstream-x86_64/lldb...

But as said before, you are just 2 commands away from a more recent Fedora toolbox available at your keyboard fingertips [1]:

$ toolbox create --distro fedora --release 40 $ toolbox enter fedora-toolbox-40

[1] and distrobox is available as a package on EPEL repos so you would have an arch or ubuntu available easily the same way.

I wonder how many developers at Red hat or Canonical actually "dogfood" their OSes at stock desktop configuration, instead of immediately going the "pro" route of basically using a custom kernel, disabling autoupdates, using a barebone DE, removing Pulseaudio / Wayland etc.

I've seen posts like yours a million times, and they can always be summed up as "no mantainer actually uses the default setup for more than a few hours before removing anything that could cause a conflict between nominally unrelated packages".

Somehow I doubt the default setup has nvidia (with proprietary drivers at least) and ext4 in mind.

Nah, give me a freshly installed Windows 11, I can be productive and start actually working on things within five minutes. Give me any Linux distribution, not without an hour.

I say this as a professional software engineer who works on a Linux VM 8 hours a day plus off work.

Can you give some example tasks that you do on both OSes? Just curious to know how the difference is so stark.

When I started at my current job I asked if I can install Linux on my work machine, and was relieved to hear a "yes"

I then booted up Fedora KDE 40, and installed it with 0 issues or tinkering. Have been using it ever since and it has been working flawlessly.

It really depends on what hardware you are working with.

HiDPI support is more than a bit sketchy still, especially on nvidia, and especially if you attach multiple screens to the computer and don't want all of them to have the same scaling.

Webcam support is also still quite sketchy. It'll work, but actually configuring the thing to e.g. select the resolution or adjust the white balance, feels like a regression to 2004.

> the smallest MacBook Air is cheap and works better than anything that runs windows.

The casual computer experience on Apple is absolutely unbeatable. It's not even close. I can't stand to do anything even remotely technical on these machines though.

I spend about 50/50 time on windows and apple these days. Windows for work/building & MacOS/iOS for entertainment, personal notes, kitchen internet appliance, socializing, HN, etc. I actually don't like to use HN on my windows PC (on iPhone right now).

I like the mental separation between the two. I can feel my blood pressure drop when I move from my sweaty nerd workstation to my MacBook or iPhone.

You’ve made that distinction yourself. There’s nothing inherently impossible on macOS that you can only do on Windows. They’re just different.

It’s always interesting to know other people’s method of separation. Im the complete opposite, but for the same reasons.

Windows is a toy for me, its not a tool I’d ever willing use for productivity or business, that’s left to OSX, Linux etc.

It just helps to not cross the streams, which when your job is computing and your hobbies involve computing helps, or at least I feel it does. I can’t use a nix os without it feeling like my day job.

Ironically when I worked in PC repair, it was the other way around, I couldn’t bare to look at windows when I got home.

Thanks for admitting you made up that statistic. Microsoft's hegemony is challenged in some areas, with Google Workspace being a credible threat. Microsoft is still dominant in some regions, but Google's made significant inroads. $16 billion to $64 billion, which works out to be 75%.

As far as devices, Microsoft makes the Surface. The fact that you didn't mention it speaks volumes about how successful it has been.

> what I don’t understand is why anyone really wants to use Windows in 2024

I don't want to use it. I am forced by my employer.

Since when did Mac's become the cheap option :)

Tech savvy people choosing proprietary software is so sad.

"Nobody got fired for choosing IBM." It's not about being tech savvy or not, it's about self preservation and career advancements.

If you're tech savvy and push for FOSS in your org then you're the one on the hook whenever that SW fails or some coworker gets it to fail because now it's YOUR responsibility. But if MS Office fails than it's not your fault, it's Microsoft's, or Crowdstrike's, or whatever $BIG_CORP you bought it from.

Most people want a chill 9-5 and aren't willing to die on that hill for the sake of pushing FOSS religiousness. Martyrism isn't rewarded. You want something where you can outsource the risk to away from you, so that you can always go home early.

Why do you think Google uses SAP. Do you think they can't develop their own alternative on site? But why bother?

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