But, when Microsoft does it, OMG the SUN is FALLING.
For Microsoft on the other hand, this is breaking new ground with Windows users. Microsoft has slowly been easing their users into a OS-as-a-Service paradigm, the next logical step for them is to require your credit card info (which to be clear, isn't required...yet) to continue to use the OS on the computer you bought outright. After all, the other major software players are pushing subscriptions instead of license purchases (Adobe, Parallels, Codeweavers, and Microsoft themselves with 365, among so many others), so why not charge a fee to use their preloaded and -- in the eyes of the average consumer -- required OS?
Apple isn't selling its hardware at a loss, it is well known for the very high margins on hardware.
I've got an install of windows 10 I use for gaming, and am now very glad I didn't upgrade to 11 yet. I'll probably avoid it as long as possible.
Dual booting can have odd effects on Windows. The strangest I have encountered is that windows shuts down when it thinks it is rebooting, and reboots when I tell it to shut down.
Other than that, no issues, though I always make sure when installing linux that I have Windows totally up to date (some mostly for firmware updates).
Manjaro and Pop_OS! are a breeze to install- resizing the windows partition is as easy as dragging a slider. It has been awhile since I have used something else, but I imagine any distro with a modern kernel and gui installer will be easy enough.
In fact, I recently picked up an lg gram (16")- some occasional graphical glitching I am blaming on wayland, but other than that, the hardware actually works better on linux than windows.
Have you ever seen Windows muck up the bootloader? I remember grumblings from some time ago, where it would cause grub to malfunction by making certain assumptions about the disk it was on.
I turned off fast boot when I set up the problematic machine, but on my newest machine (LG gram) I didn't bother and it is working fine.
That is because it is not shutting down. Go in (power) settings and change the settings to always do a shutdown when you shutdown ( default is to hibernate) and disable fast reboots.
When windows reboots during an update process, it says "rebooting" on the screen but actually powers off. Same goes for clicking "reboot" in the start menu.
When clicking "shut down", the screen displays the "shutting down" message, but it actually reboots the computer back to the OS selection screen.
Neither scenario goes into hibernate.
It's about HOW something like this is implemented.
Do I need to provide my CC info to set up a new mac user account? Fuck no you don't.