There's currently a large amount of non-technical Windows users who are being told Windows 10 is going to be no longer supported, and the only way for them to switch to Windows 11 is to buy a brand new device.

Anecdotally these people are less resistant to moving to Linux instead than you'd think, and having a distro which looks exactly like windows would be useful. Although I've just been recommending Kubuntu - KDE Plasma is already pretty close to Windows, and likely to be supported for a long time unlike this.

Getting off topic now, but I think this forced sunsetting of hardware by MS is a huge misstep - desktop/laptop PCs are no longer the necessity they used to be, I feel like a large proportion of people are going to choose to switch to just using their phone/tablet full time instead of buying a new Windows PC or installing Linux. Combined with their seemingly intentional devaluing of the xbox brand they seem to be hellbent on destroying everything that gives them mindshare with regular people.

Yeah but for these people Linux Mint is the clear recommendation. Cinnamon is pretty close to the traditional Desktop they know.

For non-technical users you want something mainstream with a big community. Sure, for me AnduinOS not being very popular would not be an issue because of the Ubuntu base and me knowing what to search for but for beginners it is better to stick something where it is easy to get help for.

> they seem to be hellbent on destroying everything that gives them mindshare with regular people

I agree. MS is making Win11 hard to swallow while at the same time devaluing the Xbox brand.

But Windows market share is remarkably resilient - especially PC gaming. They can afford to lose some tiny % market share if it will benefit them elsewhere. I don't see the benefit, but maybe someone in MS does?

Would I like to see PC gamers suddenly flip to desktop linux? Sure, I'd be pleasantly surprised. But history suggests that's not the way to bet.

Come November, maybe Windows will go from 95% on the Steam hardware listings to 94%. Although I guess change starts somewhere and that 1% is not to be discounted.

I doubt many people will switch to Linux because of the forced switch. Most people will putter along on Windows 10 until they can upgrade. It's still too much of a disruption to swith to Linux, especially for non-technical users.