You may just want to head to YouTube and look for a really dry video instructions. When I first got started on Linux like 15 years ago, videos were a lot less intimidating to me
I’d YouTube installing Ubuntu and use the YouTube filter option set to like 1 month. There’s constantly new videos for intro to Linux YouTube. I say Ubuntu because it’s a part of the most common family of popular Linux distributions
More subscription service pushing. Windows isn’t a source of revenue growth for MS, it’s a cheerleader. Lost subscription revenue for Windows on servers to Linux. MS SQL couldn’t stop MySQL, MariaDB, PostreSQL, etc. Games for Window Live and paid online gaming failed on PC. Windows Store has been a decade and a half dud. Gamepass looks stagnant and Xbox hardware in decline. Windows Phone failed - big reason Windows Store failed and no presence as a TV OS anymore besides the declining Xbox
MS wants products where users are continuously monetized. The software storefronts haven’t worked out like they wanted so focus on subscriptions and advertising. Azure, OneDrive, O365, Copilot, Gamepass less focused on Xbox hardware, … whatever else they can come up with. Windows will advertise them sacrificing user satisfaction for Windows
For MS it may be the right move. Don’t think there’s political willpower for trying again to compete with Android and iOS for mobile. Don’t think they’d even manage TV against Roku let alone Android TV or big TV makers like Samsung with Tizen. Apple would have to screw up hard with MacOS for those users to switch to Windows rather than sticking Mac or go to iPad’s. Android has a desktop cooking with an eventually graphics accelerated Debian VM. Linux in general still on the multi-decade nibbling towards the mainstream along with software like Blender, Krita, LibreOffice
OS reccuring fees is a server and enterprise workstation support contract thing. Trying to do that to consumer desktop would kill it pretty quick. Windows is in a hard place of being a mature big money maker that doesn’t look possible for growth but still too big to cast aside. It’ll straddle the line of advertising where MS tries to not kill its market share but nag users to buy MS subscription services. More telemetry for advertising
Dumb of HP and Dell to not eat the cost. Just in the future never support VVC. HEVC is well enough a thing already. Push defaults to be AV1 and then in like 5-7 years, AV2. I use AV1 for everything I can. Computer supports it. My phone does not but edits I do on my PC will be encoded to AV1. Photos, support JPEG-XL but in the interim, AVIF. Screw apple for going with HEIC. I highly doubt that there will be a successor to UHD Blu-Rays to adopt VVC. No big reason to jump to 8k. Only good would be higher bitrates/better compression and audio.
Films are mostly recorded digitally with 4k-6k cameras or a limited amount of 35mm still going on that scans well to around 4k. 8K digital cinema cameras are becoming more common but the 4k-6k ones are dominant and 70mm is expensive and uncommon. Plus significant digital effects are prevalent on even low action movies, non-sci-fi. Those are still going to have been mostly done and mastered for 4k. Another round of remastering required for 8k content where digital or 70mm film masters exists. Dinosaur broadcasters may choose VVC the shrinking world population watching dinosaur broadcasters. AV1 is increasingly the present and AV2 will be the future. VVC will be end of line because of short sighted greed