I just stick the installation DVD or USB in the drive, it go BRRRRRRRR, computer now Linux.
Once I needed to do a web search on a bios setting for a system I inherited from a 'secure' environment.
The hardest one I ever did was Batocera on a 2006 iMac, and that was still only a day of fiddling around while I drank beer and marathon-ed Bobs Burgers in the background.

I'm a janitor. IT's not that hard if you put your mind to it.

Sorry, forgot the /s at the end of that.

Dude, I'm a janitor. I taught myself how to do it in a weekend.

Corporations and businesses can keep using Windows on the newest systems.

Your average schmoo can get by with Linux on the last years refurbs. All the non Microsoft owned games are going to switch to running natively on Linux/Mac/Windows because that gives the largest market. When developers make their engines scalable to run the games in low-rez on older boxes they will have even more market share.

Most peoples lives and work are in the browser. Requiring Windows for your work software is no different then needing an endless supply of 10mm sockets.

Anyone smart enough to install Linux on their own box is smart enough not to do it for someone else.
Unless they have a maintenance and support contract already in place.

When I say 'serious gamer' I don't mean someone chasing the bleeding edge of released games.

I mean someone that has build a system, that supports a large number of games that they have curated over time, but might not have the time to play so much that they will exhaust their collection before the hardware fails. They want to play all those games through, they work on that system, so they have no need to get a new one.

If I can run my current collection of indy, Steam and Epic games on the system I have without it dyeing I will likely die of old age before I finish them. FFS I'm finally restarting Morrowind after my halfway done save got borked 20 years ago.

Got a college diploma for 'Computer Programming' 25 years ago; I did so poorly it was basically a pity diploma to make me go away.

Did some A/V work for a decade then for the past 16 years I've been a janitor.

Taught myself to use Linux in a weekend because Win11 keeps trying to sell me shit and copy everything into the cloud.

Has so much fun I converted every old system I had to Linux. 2 Thinkcentres (had to do some interesting bios fuckery there), a Thinkpad, a 2006 iMac got Batocera and became an arcade for my local bar. I have a decade old HP laptop a dedicated Minecraft box for the kids. The Win10 primary gameing box will get a 1 TB drive and a good gaming fork this winter - need to find one to support my Oculus S.

It's not that hard.

Just have to want to do it and read some web pages.

It takes an hour or two to reimage most systems to run a modern Linux distro that will run FOOS versions of most software, all the browser based stuff, and more and more games every day (many games are running BETTER under Linux then Windows 11).

It's free, easy, and unchains people from Microsoft and Apple.

It just takes people making the plunge to install it as a dual boot option on their system until they no longer requires the Windows installation.

Melancholy Elephants
http://www.spiderrobinson.com/...

UBI under capitalism is just a subsidy for Capitalists.

It provides a baseline of minimum needs so that people are not forced to work for a living under Capitalism ( or work their fair share of the required labour under Communism, Communists fucking despise the idea of UBI btw, it's the Neo-Liberal Capitalists that love it), so the wages for the jobs that do still need to be filled can be kept low. UBI is a Capitalist tool for wage suppression.

Maybe you've grown up and lived a life of plenty, have no children, and are living the life of a nascent Techno-feudalist, I don't know you, but many people that I do know that are young and don't come from money and privilege's are literally despondent of future prospects. The young artists and musicians are not only competing with each other but now have to compete with the Capitalists pet AIs generating slop derived from the works that they put out in hopes of building a career. Young coders and other entry level IT types are competing with AI. Now you're talking about getting the pet AIs to run robots to take away the manual labour and the service industry. All you're going to leave the lower classes is being sex workers for the rich.

We on /. tend to skew older, and many have spent a long time in a relatively affluent siloed echo chamber. Go try talking to some kids that come from the lower 50% of the economic ladder and you will find a lot of despair and no intentions of ever having kids, or their own home, or anything really.

When it comes to doing gross, dangerous, repetitive, manual labor automation does make sense.

That is not the issue.

The issue that many have is the possibility that the automation will take away all the valuable labor that people do to provide for themselves and their families.

Even _IF_ the Capitalist elite that will inevitably end up owning all the AIs and the automatons run by it provide UBI for the people that _they choose_ to maintain as 'stock' those people's lives will be essentially meaningless.

Do you expect those peons sitting in their peon living cubicles, eating their peon quality food, listening and watching entertainment equivalent to the echoes of a fart in a jar to have any encouragement to strive to be more?

If there is no real opportunities to try, fail, grow, and compete and collaborate with others in pursuit of passion, power, prestige, wealth, stability, all the things that make life both wonderful and torturous then what you get is the ennui and malaise that so many young people now have as they look towards the future you are fanboi-ing.

If you think the birth rates in First World countries is low now, just wait until all but the the children of the 1% see absolutely no reason to try to live because automation and AI took away every opportunity worth Capitalising.

If you engineer automation that removes all the people from the system then what is the point of engineering automation for the system at all?
The system exists because the people exist, without the people the system has no meaning or purpose.

Statistically, probably not.

I'm a commie and "labor is the source of all value in the economy" is an equally valid statement from the most Sociopathic Right Capitalist to the Wackiest Left Communist.

If people can't work to make products to spend money on then people can't work to earn money to spend on products.

Take the too many people out of the system and it just becomes bits swirling in a circle until the system runs out of energy and comes to a stop.

I take 15% of my income from cleaning toilets, patching drywall, refinishing floors, etc., in a 160 year old heritage building and buy index funds.
I've got job security because nobody wants my job and the majority of my tasks would require more effort to automate then it would be worth,

So why not just nationalize all mining for national security purposes and streamline the continual processing of all mine tailings for useful material until there is nothing left?