Future of Windows in pro audio

[legendCNCD]

Midi 2.0, Native ASIO coming later on X64. Nice. Will have to try them on my gaming PC, not going to update my audio PC, at least at first. It is a production machine set in stone, until I go and press Update.

[audiojunkie]

Not sure anybody mentioned this before, but Windows has some changes in the works for better MIDI support.
viewtopic.php?t=627496

Yeah, they are actually quite impressive. ASIO is also now going to be directly supported. Both are good things for the Windows OS.

[Milkman]

1. Windows has no future.
2. All your software is cross-platform. You already own if for Mac.
3. You can't keep Windows as a local account anymore.

If you know windows systems administration, you absolutely can create a fully anonymous, no microsoft account, local system.

Im moving to linux... but I have some work to do, in terms of migrating each of my many instruments and plugins, and I am procrastinating for a lot of reasons. So I have 1 win11 pro machine here, license acquired for $10, and I was able to create a 100% local account without any "AI" trash embedded in anything I care about. The pro license is the key -- if you use a home license, you cant control it.

To do with linux, there is absolutely a trajectory and momentum, just like in the gaming industry. Today more than ever. There are more people thinking about this than *ever* before, there is the steam deck and related tech which is bringing MOST major games to a linux-based OS, and there are plenty of plugin, instrument, and DAW makers who NATIVELY support linux. We can do this, but it takes some dedication and focus, if we have that.

Windows is meant to draw you in with 'conveniences', and those conveniences, as could be predicted, have now turned into traps that make the cost of switching very high for a lot of people, like so many other software ecosystems. Its time to put in the slightest amount of effort to move away from such an unethical, bottom-feeding company as microsoft, as they gleefully partner up with fascist and authoritarian governments anywhere and everywhere, and as microsoft themselves HAND OVER THE ENCRYPTION KEYS TO YOUR 'ONE DRIVE' to the fascist government of the US, as we speak.

There are... major reasons to move away from windows/microsoft, and its far, far beyond bluescreens and driver conflicts, by now.

[Tiles]

There are indeed many valid reasons to move away from Windows and Microsoft today. But there are even more reasons to stay with Windows. Installing Ubuntu, Mint, or Arch often leads to a moment of truth, when solving one set of problems usually brings a different set of trade offs and impossibilities.

Many workflows depend on native Windows applications, and a large amount of commonly used software is either missing or only works via Wine or Proton. Linux is not well suited for many everyday tasks that work out of the box on Windows. Usability is another hurdle. For many tasks that could be handled through a graphical interface, you are still forced to use the bash, and this pattern repeats in various ways.

These limitations are largely self-inflicted by the Linux ecosystem itself, rather than being the fault of users or third parties. They stem from fragmentation among distributions, the lack of commercial support, and fundamental design choices in how Linux is structured. Managing everything through a single central system, the package manager, works in theory but creates practical dependency challenges that contribute to these issues. This is a systemic problem that has persisted for more than twenty-five years and shows little sign of ever being resolved. As a developer, Linux often gives me much more work than Windows, which contributes to the situation where there is less software available.

For most users, the lack of native software remains a practical barrier rather than a philosophical one. It is not a question of will. Principles are nice, but they do not get the job done. That is also why Windows still holds a vast majority of the desktop market, while Linux distributions together represent only a small single digit percentage. No Linux distribution functions as a true general purpose platform like Windows, and macOS, the only real competitor, has its own limitations.

Linux works best as a complementary platform for tasks where it truly excels, such as servers, embedded systems, or certain development environments. Even in areas like gaming via Proton, it still covers far fewer users than Windows and has limitations for many mainstream applications.

TL;DR: If I can’t do my job, switching to Linux is simply not an option

Written from Ubuntu as my dual boot system

EDIT, maybe one last word about Onedrive and Bitlocker encryption. I think it is common sense simply not to use it, there are better alternatives. Same for the integrated AI solution. It was one of the first things that i turned off. I don't need a spy AI that makes snapshots from my desktop. These things are not part of the OS, even when Windows makes it look like, by shipping it together with the OS. It's part of the service with which Microsoft makes their money nowadays.

[PAK]

Same for the integrated AI solution. It was one of the first things that i turned off. I don't need a spy AI that makes snapshots from my desktop. These things are not part of the OS, even when Windows makes it look like

Well, it's going to go past mere looks. Both Microsoft and Apple being in the process of making changes so that AI agents can directly “plumb” into core OS components, including the file system. This way they can “better analyse” your computers contents and offer “solutions” based on this. Don’t worry, it’s all totally secure.

If you don't like the sound of that? Too bad. You’re taking it. Just as when Apple, gluing batteries into devices, appeared to give the wider industry permission to engage in such practices, so Microsoft’s treatment of its users ability to control their machine and its updates (with no apparent legal consequences), has effectively given Apple, and others, the green light to do the same.

Tahoe deprecates the ability for the OS to easily block updates. Now you’ll need network level blocks if you don’t want to be nagged to install Mac OS 27 with the new improved Google Gemini Siri. Oh, and if your device supports OS26+, but you stuck with iOS 18 / Sequoia? Maybe they’ll just let your Messenger and FaceTime certificates expire in 2027. You won’t have to update your device. You just might not be able to keep using those services if you don’t. We’ll see how far they push it, but it’s not looking too wonderful at this point..

BTW Re: Why Microsoft have strong government cooperation? They learned their lessons in the late 90’s when regulators took exception to them bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. Their solution was to force the browser components into the file explorer so it literally couldn’t be unbundled. The years of security problems that caused was a small price to pay. But it taught them that, if they give the politicians what they want, they can effectively do what the hell they want with little to no consequence. Don’t like it? Watcha gonna do? Use Linux?

[Tiles]

Yeah, as stated, i also heavily dislike the direction in which this is heading. But so far i was always able to simply turn it off.

[lunardigs]

Microsoft was created by DARPA. Similar to Tesla and SpaceX plus many others. You'll have trouble looking that up, but they're basically front companies for the military industrial complex ...
Have a great day!

[Tiles]

I don’t mean this unkindly, but this reads more like a conspiracy narrative than a historical account.

DARPA funded a lot of foundational research that later influenced civilian technology. Microsoft, however, was simply founded by Gates and Allen as a private company. That part of the story is actually pretty mundane.

There is also a practical reality check here. If Microsoft were a military front, it would be a truly impressive achievement that governments all over the world, including direct competitors and rivals of the United States, somehow failed to notice and still deploy Microsoft software at massive scale. That idea is more entertaining than plausible.

Ironically, narratives like this are also part of the reason Linux often struggles to be taken seriously outside its own bubble. Conspiracy framing and ideological storytelling tend to undermine otherwise very real technical strengths.

EDIT: Regarding the idea that Microsoft could simply pull the plug, they could do that exactly once and never again. It would effectively be the end of the company.

Interestingly, something very similar has already happened in the Linux world. Red Hat pulled the dependency plug, which also affected distributions based on it, like Rocky Linux. So much for reliability.

[VladK]

EDIT: Regarding the idea that Microsoft could simply pull the plug, they could do that exactly once and never again. It would effectively be the end of the company.

A lot of software companies did exactly that in Russia (pull the plug), if you follow the news about its Ukraine invasion.

[lunardigs]

Well, not to sound unkindly either, but ......
Some possibly incorrect assumptions you might have could be:

- That the governments of the world aren't in league with each other--especially the so-called "west"
- Linux hasn't been infiltrated by the likes of DARPA, or that efforts to hijack it haven't taken place already or continue
- That the nefarious aim of Microsoft upon the world and whichever governments is to "pull the plug"
- Conspiracy = false, untrue, impossible, or even silly sounding
- And, that things are as they appear--especially our alleged "history"

[PAK]

Microsoft, however, was simply founded by Gates and Allen as a private company. That part of the story is actually pretty mundane.

Yes. Their ticket, to the big time, was arrived at via their ethically questionable dealings with IBM and Gary Kildall. The reality not being one of Bond supervillains, but a grubby (and more familiar) story involving sharp business practices. This, infamously, included buying companies only to do nothing with them (The music software Bars And Pipes being one such example.. )

Ironically, narratives like this are also part of the reason Linux often struggles to be taken seriously outside its own bubble. Conspiracy framing and ideological storytelling tend to undermine otherwise very real technical strengths.

Hmm, I really don’t think it’s a big factor I think its biggest challenge is, once you free people from strictly commercial constraints, many will disagree on what their time should be spent on. Linux is unlikely to have ended up where it did had it not been for Torvalds role in focusing efforts. And, unfortunately, the needs of DAW users are fairly far down most lists..

[Tiles]

Yes. Their ticket, to the big time, was arrived at via their ethically questionable dealings with IBM and Gary Kildall. The reality not being one of Bond supervillains, but a grubby (and more familiar) story involving sharp business practices. This, infamously, included buying companies only to do nothing with them (The music software Bars And Pipes being one such example.. )

I don’t really agree with that characterisation. Describing this as “ethically questionable” already imposes a moral frame that feels stronger than the facts support. What happened was fairly typical business behaviour for the era: opportunistic, pragmatic, and not especially unusual.

The same applies to examples like Bars and Pipes. Acquisitions followed by discontinuation are common, often driven by shifting priorities rather than intent to suppress a product. It’s unfortunate, but it’s not particularly sinister, nor specific to Microsoft.

Hmm, I really don’t think it’s a big factor I think its biggest challenge is, once you free people from strictly commercial constraints, many will disagree on what their time should be spent on. Linux is unlikely to have ended up where it did had it not been for Torvalds role in focusing efforts. And, unfortunately, the needs of DAW users are fairly far down most lists..

I don’t think that explanation really holds up either. Disagreement over priorities exists everywhere, including in strictly commercial environments. It’s not unique to free or volunteer-driven ecosystems.

The more relevant issue is that many professional use cases simply don’t align well with how most Linux development is incentivised and funded. DAWs aren’t “low priority” because of a lack of focus, but because developing and supporting them properly is expensive, unglamorous, and offers little return for most contributors. Linux is not a market in the usual sense, and developing for Linux typically requires significantly more effort than for Windows.

Torvalds’ role was crucial for the kernel, but that kind of focus never extended to the wider desktop and application ecosystem. And that matters, because Torvalds has been very explicit for many years about the practical shortcomings of Linux on the desktop. Like here.



If that pragmatism had carried more weight at the distribution level, some decisions might well have been more user-facing and less ideologically driven.

[jamcat]

Ironically, narratives like this are also part of the reason Linux often struggles to be taken seriously outside its own bubble. Conspiracy framing and ideological storytelling tend to undermine otherwise very real technical strengths.

Hmm, I really don’t think it’s a big factor

Correct. It's the beards and fedoras.

[Tiles]

Well, not to sound unkindly either, but ......
Some possibly incorrect assumptions you might have could be:

- That the governments of the world aren't in league with each other--especially the so-called "west"
- Linux hasn't been infiltrated by the likes of DARPA, or that efforts to hijack it haven't taken place already or continue
- That the nefarious aim of Microsoft upon the world and whichever governments is to "pull the plug"
- Conspiracy = false, untrue, impossible, or even silly sounding
- And, that things are as they appear--especially our alleged "history"

I’m not dismissing the idea that power structures exist or that governments and corporations pursue their own interests. That’s hardly controversial.

The problem is that what you list here are not arguments but unfalsifiable assumptions. Once the premise is “everything may be secretly coordinated and nothing is as it appears,” there is no meaningful way to reason about concrete technologies, risks, or real-world outcomes.

At that point, any claim becomes immune to evidence, and discussion stops being analytical and turns into belief.

If we want to talk about Linux, Microsoft, or software reliability in practice, we have to stick to things that can actually be observed, verified, and compared.

[Tiles]

EDIT: Regarding the idea that Microsoft could simply pull the plug, they could do that exactly once and never again. It would effectively be the end of the company.

A lot of software companies did exactly that in Russia (pull the plug), if you follow the news about its Ukraine invasion.

Yes, and now they’re basically out of business here in the West. That’s exactly what I meant.