That’s definitely been a catalyzing factor for me. I had fiddled around with Linux and had been pretty ‘meh’ about Windows for years, but I was just coasting along the path of least resistance. Them telling me that I could no longer use my perfectly functional computer for Windows was the ‘last straw’ that finally what made me begin to take action and get ready to say goodbye to Windows.
If you think about it, Microsoft’s timing for this is really perfect. Wait until Linux is very viable for desktop use including gaming then tell vast numbers of your customers that they need to ditch a fully working computer in order to keep using Windows. I expect that this figure will probably double by the end of the year. There’s another article by ZDNet now that says that the share is more like 6% and rapidly accelerating. I’ll post it on the main Linux community if hasn’t already been posted there.
As much as I’m pro-Linux and anti-Microsoft and anti-Apple, I have to say that I don’t think comparing desktop use to server use is appropriate when it comes to security. I don’t think server use of any OS translates to desktop use in terms of security at all. If nothing else, the end user is a major difference between the two. End users download, install, run, and interact with all kinds of random software, websites, etc. without thinking and this is the main source of desktop malware. The same is not the case for servers.