this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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[–] dismay3915@lemmy.world 10 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

One of the main places windows is used, like it or not, are organizations and companies. Especially small ones. Specially ones that are not in wealthy countries. And the only thing that keeps them from switching to linux is microsoft office. (Most importantly Word, excel).

My company has ~20 people and I would switch them over to linux if it wasn't for word and excel.

While libreoffice is great on it's own, companies send eachother xlsx and docx files. And libreoffice isnt great at reading or writing them. Specially complex ones. I don't think it's much of libre office's fault, but more the shitty incompatible, unstandardized microsoft formats.

Currently I'm the only Linux user in the team, and I constantly advocate Linux, but I know if anybody switches, compatibility with microsoft office is going to be a problem. I can take the risk with the tech team but not the office section (hr, sales, secretary accounting etc.) really.

[–] sonofearth@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

Try onlyoffice and slowly try to shift to libreoffice with open document formats. Or just skip that part and move everyone to the web versions of office. Also if you guys are on office 2010, the last time I ran it via wine, it worked completely fine.

[–] AgentBoom@lemmy.world 6 points 1 hour ago

Did you try OnlyOffice? I heard it has good compatibility with Microsoft Office's files, it's available on almost every OS, and looks easy to use. However, I'm not sure if you can create very complex documents like with Office.

[–] rickywithanm@aussie.zone 1 points 2 hours ago

This is the same thing that keeps my parents on windows. I do agree it’s not libre offices fault

[–] brownsugga@lemmy.world 23 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

I’m not very techie, so when I took my brand new Lenovo (cheap) laptop from w11 to Linux mint, it really felt like an achievement. I haven’t used a command terminal since college, and I straight up made a bootable usb and wiped w11

[–] rickywithanm@aussie.zone 3 points 1 hour ago

Hell yeah brother

[–] xvertigox@lemmy.world 7 points 5 hours ago

Nice, that's sick. I'm soft modding my Wii atm and it also feels good.

[–] Lucky_777@lemmy.world 25 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

If you're still hanging on to old hardware. Linux is the way to go baby

[–] naticus@lemmy.world 8 points 4 hours ago

At this point, if you have hardware, Linux is a good choice. New or old. The older it is might change which distro, but still a good choice.

[–] 0x0@lemmy.zip 12 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

"Most browsers, including Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, have already ended support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1."

To me Millions of flies can't be wrong: eat shit. is a crappy argument but at least they're

"If your current hardware can't handle Windows 10 or higher for some reason, you can switch to a Linux-based operating system. The vast majority of Linux distributions come with Firefox as the default browser."

[–] kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 4 hours ago

I mean, it's a lot of work to make security updates for a browser on an operating system that doesn't get security updates anymore. Why spend money fixing the weapons on a sinking ship?

[–] hitstun@feddit.online 47 points 9 hours ago (3 children)

The PC Gamer article's title also says "upgrade or". That's a heck of a detail to editorialize out of the title.

From the Mozilla post it cites:

After this, no security updates will be provided and you are strongly encouraged to upgrade to a supported Microsoft Windows version.

Or, if your current hardware can't handle Windows 10 or higher for some reason, you can switch to a Linux-based operating system. The vast majority of Linux distributions come with Firefox as the default browser.

I agree switching to Linux is the better option. I want to try Bazzite.

Bazzite is amazing, nearly bulletproof even?

I had a few times where it booted to the grub emergency shell, but it literally just fixed itself. Just reboot and it uses the other A/B slot. And the next update attempt just fixes whatever the problem was. That's only happened twice in the last 5 months since I switched. Most longtime Linux users should be very familiar with the grub emergency shell, but I've never been on a distro where it just fixes itself. I don't ever have to think or worry about updates, it's just a reliable daily driver. It's sick.

As people have said, Bazzite is immutable. You can install system packages/libraries if you absolutely need to, but you really should run your custom stuff in a Distrobox instead. Distrobox is preinstalled, supports graphical apps automatically, and most of the time you won't even notice it's not your real OS.

I think Bazzite is more stable and usable than Windows now. I'm tempted to switch my parents to it, it's been much more fault tolerant than Windows 11.

[–] kuhli@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Bazzite's excellent, just be aware going in that it's an immutible distro and some stuff may be different than you're used to.

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

It will be different anyway, as it is a completely different operating system that has nothing in common with windows.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Windows is mutable. That’s likely what they are referring to.

[–] p0358@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 hours ago

Except it will prevent you from mutating many of its system files. I mean it's not a good argument for a former Windows user, unless they get a sudden urge to tinker with all possible system files on Linux (which is possible to do on immutable systems in one way or another, but it's much harder and not as straightforward) 

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[–] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 hours ago

Yeah, Linux is an afterthought, but I'm glad that they brought it up at all. They could've mentioned how Linux is more privacy-conscious than Windows, but that might've opened them up to a lawsuit.

[–] Octagon9561@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 hours ago

RIP to my 20 year old PC I guess

[–] BoomBoomBoomBoom@lemmings.world 8 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Windows is so shit. Glad I switched, everything works so much better on Linux.

[–] Quadhammer@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Is there a good distro to pick for a surface tablet?

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 hours ago

My understanding is you need a specific kernel, which likely limits your choices somewhat (dunno, don't have one, but that seems like a good place to start). Seems totally doable though.

[–] mintiefresh@piefed.ca 175 points 16 hours ago (15 children)

Already on Linux.

Life is good 👍

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[–] Samsy@lemmy.ml 55 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (20 children)

Since most of Lemmy users are Linux fans, this headline sounds nice but is a bit misleading if you read the original post from Mozilla:

How can I get the newest features of Firefox?

If you want to keep your Firefox up to date, with all the latest features and security updates, you need to upgrade your operating system to Windows 10 or higher. In some cases, Microsoft may require newer hardware in order to support the newer operating system. After upgrading, you can easily reinstall Firefox and keep all of your settings.

Or, if your current hardware can't handle Windows 10 or higher for some reason, you can switch to a Linux-based operating system. The vast majority of Linux distributions come with Firefox as the default browser. Please see the support websites for the version of Linux that you're interested in.

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[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

95 was the last good windows i said what i said

[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 6 points 8 hours ago (2 children)
[–] 0x0@lemmy.zip 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

XP SP3 enters the chat.
Ride the sine wave...

[–] okmko@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

Or the cosine wave until it hurts so good.

[–] i_am_somebody@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I did like 98SE a lot, was impressed by 95 and loved 3.1, but the first really great, stable, modern windows was 2k

[–] greatwhitebuffalo41@slrpnk.net 1 points 5 hours ago

I had all the above but I had 2k the longest. I miss it.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 3 points 7 hours ago

Soooo, supermium, then?

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