Recently Microsoft released the link 365 which is basically a thin client for Azure. You can’t run anything locally nor is there any local files. It literally just connects you to a desktop elsewhere.
Do you think this is what Windows 12 might look like? I feel like this idea is not practical for average consumers. Maybe they will make something that’s like Chrome OS?
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They’ll make whatever sells subscriptions at this point.
Don’t buy, only subscribe. From media to software and now to hardware and OS. No more license keys you can reuse, no more owning what you pay for, just live services and ever-rising subscription costs that can change at any time for any reason and neuters your ability to take legal action against them while they do it.
Silence critics, control available options, capture profit - that’s the name of the game. They’ll sell this to businesses as ‘take your PC anywhere’ like you couldn’t already do that and then they have a hunk of plastic and silicon they need to pay out the nose for until they finally give it up. And they’ll have to give it up because it literally can’t run anything else on the available hardware. I’m sure folks will hack it apart but like, what’s the point?
Going to print that onto a card for the next time someone asks “WhY dO yoU rUn LiNUX??”
Nobody actually ever asks that which is why I tell them anyway 😁👍
I used Arch btw
It is not even a thin client for Azure. It is a physical front end for one specific, Azure based VM product. It doesn’t even support AVD which would have made it interesting for lab and classroom setups and given it a bit more utility.
There are two questions. Is it cheap, and can it be hacked to run Linux instead?
No, it’s a piece of shit and it’s more expensive than mini PCs many times more capable.
It has a TPM and restricted boot so probably no Linux
OK, so it is a door stopper. Thanks for the warning.
A 3rd question will be: It the power button on top or covered?
bottom like apple of course
Have fun trying to flash another os when the servers shut down.
Likely not possible thanks to “enhanced security”
Yep 🤣
a weird trash can you have
The future of windows is /dev/null
Investors won’t be interested in that, it sounds too complicated. How about /dev/null as a Service?
What would be cool is if there was a company that made Linux platform that was consumer focused.
Linux Mint, Ubuntu, even Arch are tying to make Linux easier to use for average consumers
Isn’t that what canonical was trying to do for years now?
Just the reemergence of the thin client that was all the shit back in the day… the pendulum will swing back.
No lol.
At least I hope not
Username checks out
Just missing a giant Galvin Belson signature
*thin client.
Everything Microsoft has been doing for years now is aligned in the direction of jamming as many subscription services down our throat as they can manage, whether we want them or not. They are not alone in this by any stretch. Cloud based hardware definitely fits neatly into the current tech zeitgeist.
Was it the future of Windows when they did this the last bunch of times? The Wyse Winterm came out in 1993. It was a huge failure then and every iteration of the same same thing since has also failed.
What makes this version different? Branding? The fact that some of the OS/software doesn’t boot over the network? That you have to have a working Internet connection and not just a working local network and boot server (LOL)?
No business wants this. No consumer wants this. There is no “added value” in this device. It literally only runs software made by Microsoft and even then, only software that runs through Azure.
What office worker literally only needs Office 365? I mean, you can get away with a whole lot just in the browser but if you’re going to do that why bother with this device? Just use ChromeOS stuff (and never be locked in to Microsoft’s stuff).
Why do you say that no business wants this? Obviously, thin clients have been a thing for decades now. This is just another thin client, nothing more.
Thin clients have been failing to sell and being cursed by entire verticals, from individual contributors to top management any time they find an exception for that failure since the 1990s.
No thin client ever saw repeat customers since dump terminals went away. But yeah, if your point is that they exist and have curstomers, that’s true.
I manage a fleet of thin clients for our organization. We have been buying and managing them for 10+ years. They are a huge cost savings over desktops for shared environments (I work for a company in the manufacturing space). For users that do nothing other than log in and check their email and update a spreadsheet, being able to shove 10+ user sessions on a single VM is much more cost effective than deploying and managing a full desktop.
Plus, these devices can connect to Cloud PC’s, so users who need a dedicated machine can use these too. I have been using a Cloud PC for over two years now for all of my job functions and love it. I would happily take one of these devices, as all of my company issued devices are just used to connect to my Cloud PC.
Yup. SaaS with nice regular subscription revenues.
