It may be common knowledge but was news to me. I read where Windows 10 will eventually start charging $7 a month for Windows 10 Enterprise to businesses. They say there are no current plans to charge for Windows 10 for personal use.

I speculate that once the Win 7 and 8 support runs out, a personal charge is coming for Windows 10. They pushed awfully hard for 7 and 8 users to upgrade free. You know the pay off is coming eventually. If they were to start charging, I wonder if this will further push people to move to Linux? Maybe even get software companies to write for Linux as well.

What do you think?

Ace.

I think whole IT departments are built upon supporting Windows so there's not likely to be a shift for a good many years. Sadly even in small businesses people are too ignorant to understand that computer!=Windows and tend to rely too heavily upon M$ offerings to be able to choose anything else even if they begin to realise there might be something else.

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That's already, not eventually. Win10 Enterprise licences are $7/month/user.

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I would more likely expect Win10 to benefit Apple, as most Windows users have never heard of Linux and the ones who have think it's some dark mysterious thing.

BTW, saw this today: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07...win10_devices/

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some also think it's illegal, or at least seriously borderline.
no joke.
like cracking or torrenting.

I think there is also the common thought that Linux won't run anything ppl are familiar with. It would alienate them from their computer community. Now with social media being so big, ppl are concern with Facebooking and Skypeing. I'm sure they also see Linux as taking a lot of hacking to get it up and going the first time. I think they see Linux as something to launch rockets or hack the pentagon, not something to google recipes and play canasta on line.

I must admit, having been some what of a techie back in the DOS/Win3.1 days, I was getting tired of the over protectiveness of newer Windows. Its what drew me to Linux for fun and a sense of accomplishment. It wasn't until I ran across distros like Linux Mint that I realize you don't be any more of a user that you are with Windows to get a cool looking version of Linux up and running.

I of course went with Slackware because I do like being involved among other reasons.

I've been using Linux for many years, and I've been a member of forums (including, but not limited to this one) for many years as well. As soon as Windows 10 came out and started pushing itself onto people's computers, I'd say the number of new "I want to get rid of Windows" threads and posts on ALL forums (even in the General section of forums that have nothing to do with computers) has increased at least ten-fold.

So yes, from what I've seen, I'd say Windows 10 has done more to push people to Linux than any Microsoft OS in history. People hated Windows 8, but it didn't scare them like 10 does. Pushing itself on their machines, sharing all of their data with Microsoft, autonomously resetting the options to turn data sharing back on after the user has explicitly turned it off, etc. It's a monster.

Techn*ology in general moves so fast, our lifetimes may seem an eternity otherwise... \

I used losedouhs from the end of 95 up until 7 and have had a used ma¢ or two. They don't change much but when they do as a (97 long to me) longtime GNU\Linux user noticed where most of these "changes" come from.

The world has proprietary needs, I get that but the best ways have and will prevail. Should we have unskilled rich* people, then the hungry for more than knowledge*?

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Yes many will go linux, I mean Chromebooks. They are technically linux aren't they?

Technically, yes, I guess, except for the whole freedom thing. (grin, duck, and run)

I think much the same.
The benefit they do have though is for those of us who do tolerate some non-free software to, for example, watch movies. Having another non-Windows platform also helps and that it's built on a Linux kernel seems to help a little more.
Not really Linux as a lot of us use it though.

Chrome OS is kind of closed-source, isn't it? I heard it was based on Ubuntu, now it uses Gentoo as the base. Anyway, Google is not worse than MS in terms of restricting digital freedom.

As annoying as I find Google, I'd say they are much better than MS in this area. Openness benefits Google. It enables them to slurp up more data about you, and you, and you, and especially you.

I do think that "Don't be evil" is a thing of the past, but I do not think it's been replaced by "Let's actively be evil." By comparison, Facebook makes Google look like a paragon, and Microsoft's primary business model has been bait-and-switch since the days of the browser wars.

Not that I'm cynical or anything . . . .