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Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

>I always ask co-workers how much liberty Windows users are willing to sacrifice to continue using their systems.

You do realize we live in an era of smartphones, facebook and cloud services. Those liberties have been given up already. Window is looking downright open these days.

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Windows is not really open, has never has been and never will be. In fact it is getting worse. There's always a black box at the bottom of every stack trace, a secret in every corner and a cost to every solution be it time or money.

Users, myself included, use it because we're stuck.

I'm in the fortunate position to not need Windows for anything other than the odd game. The GNU/Linux desktop has been fulfilling my needs for over a decade now.

In today's internet-centric world, there is little need to have Windows around for anything other than very specific jobs - for the average user.

many of us have avoided (or selectively/safely used) the accessories of this era, because we value our liberties.

Seychelles/Iceland-based cloud storage providers, and rk3xxx-based mobile devices (with VoIP) keep us relevant and reasonably modern while preserving our rights.

There are more of us than you think.

Accurate but irrelevant. The point is not to adapt to the "new normal", but to reject it and demand a higher standard.

> The point is not to adapt to the "new normal", but to reject it and demand a higher standard

Most people don't care. Features are more important than FOSS when consumer software is concerned.

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