In the enterprise environment, Microsoft's core applications of Outlook, Teams and Office365 are available as cross-platform web based or PWA applications. I use Ubuntu 22.04 with a KDE Plasma desktop at work and I can access all the MS applications that I need to use on Linux. The days of the Microsoft lockin have dissolved away.

I don't have a MS Windows system for me to run WSL2 but I don't think that I am missing out. ;-)

Linux chrome browser and Linux Edge browser. I believe it also works in Linux Firefox but I have not tried that.

I thought vintage computers were built in the 1980s. I would not call a 2012-2014 computer, vintage.

I have 40 year old Sinclair ZX Spectrums that still work as intended.

I am still using a dual core PC built circa 2007 that runs Linux but I don't call it vintage. I did upgrade to using a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB RAM as my main desktop machine with a 250GB micro SD card.

My employer allows me to run Linux Ubuntu 24.04 and it is supported in the corporate Intranet. Ironically, Microsoft is one of our partners allowing Linux desktops to be integrated into the corporate Intranet. My Linux laptop does have some services running for compliance purposes so you are correct that only authorized operating systems and devices can be used. However, Microsoft themselves are supporting Linux desktops in the corporate environment. Therefore, the lockin to being forced to use MS windows is becoming weaker especially that Microsoft is supporting Linux.

Did you know that Microsoft is a member of the Linux Foundation and provides Linux kernel fixes ?

I use Linux Ubuntu 24.04 at work and I also use the MS PWA for Outlook, Office and Teams. It works well on Linux. I used to have a Win10 virtual machine for the rare occasions when something was too Windows centric for Linux to handle but now I no longer use the Win10 VM (also Broadcom broke my VMware environment).

Norway's oil company is state owned and therefore, Norway's citizens benefit from the sale of their own oil. The US and UK oil companies are not state owned and their citizens have to rely on taxing them to get any benefit. Obviously, giving the profits back to the people from a state owned oil company is more per capita than taxing the profits of a public company. This is one reason why Norway can have social policies for their citizens.

Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... there appears to be only 1 working natural gas fired power station in Norway. I think your comment about Norway using a "fair amount of fossil fuels" for electricity generation is misinformed.

OK, but I don't run Windows at work. I mostly use Outlook and Teams on Linux so that I can communicate with my colleagues. I rarely use Office so I'm not bothered by any limitations of the web applications. I think my employer is more interested in cross-platform compatibility rather than having a lockin to Windows. For my employer, cost is secondary to an employee working effectively in their working environment. Note that my employer uses Microsoft to provide corporate Intranet integration with the Ubuntu desktop environment.

I do wonder how long Windows with survive in the business environment because many applications are now in the cloud and only a web browser is needed.

MS Excel is available from Microsoft as a web browser application. I also run Outlook and Teams on my work Linux Ubuntu 24.04 laptop. You don't need Windows to be able to run MS applications.

At work I run the MS Office web browser variant on my Linux Ubuntu 24.04 laptop. I also run Outlook and Teams on Linux via the MS web browser applications. Microsoft supports Linux in the corporate world and provides Linux kernel fixes. I don't need Windows to be able to run MS applications.

Windows itself has Linux subsystem for Windows which allows a Linux desktop to run inside Windows.

It does seem that Microsoft has turned away from the dark-side and is now a supported of Linux.

Microsoft supports Linux in the corporate world. I run Ubuntu 24.04 Linux on my work laptop and I can still run MS Office, Outlook and Teams because Microsoft has web browser based versions of their applications. Windows also has Linux subsystem for Windows so a Linux desktop can run within Windows.

Microsoft also contribute Linux kernel fixes.

Therefore, the lockin to running Windows is dissolving and it is being done by Microsoft themselves.

I can tell that you are a software programmer because you are out by 1.

You said "you have 14 years to get this stuff fixed." but that will be too late.

It is currently 13 years to 19th January 2038.

I see you that are already out by one year! It is 13 years to go! (19 January 2038)

Sadly, the fix is not as simple as using a 64-bit operating system. Y2038 can manifest itself in anything that uses time. In particular, communications that allow interoperability between systems that have any time based metadata could be vulnerable. For example, filesystems such as EXT2, EXT3 and EXT4 (32-bit variant) are non-compliant. Or perhaps information that uses timestamps that overflow.

Interoperability will be the key point of failure.

One of the high risk areas will be automotive because vehicles can last over 15 years. Therefore, some vehicles on the road today could make it to 2038 and these vehicles probably have not been certified for compliance against Y2038.

I think the ranking is based on web searches.

The ranking could be misleading because some languages are harder than others. For example, Python has a different file layout style to other languages by having significantly important amounts of leading whitespace for delimiting codeblocks. Could it be that people search about the idiosyncrasies of a specific computer language because that language is alien to them?

Also, older computer languages (pre world-wide-web) have written manuals and books to describe the usage of the language. Perhaps, these developers sill access this written material on their desks so no internet search is needed ? For example, Programming the Z80 by Zodney Zaks circa 1979.

Think about how bad programming language would appear in the rankings ? I think a bad language would be highly ranked due to the difficulty in using the language.

I think Perl is easier to grasp than Python. Perhaps that is why Perl is ranked lowly as it is too easy to use?

There are multiple variants of C from K & R, ANSI C (C89) up to C23. I wonder which variant is the most popular ? But I think this ranking scheme will misidentify the most popular (mostly used) variant of C.

Problems come when equipment such as an automobile, last longer than the cellular radio network. A few years back, Nissan had to retrofit 3G modems to replace the original 2G modems in some of their vehicles because the 2G data network had been turned off. This will get worse the future as modern cars typically connect to the cellular radio network for updates. OK, system updates can use WiFi but push services go over the cellular network.

Smartmeters may use the cellular radio network. Hopefully, the data modem is easy to replace on-site as that could be costly to retrofit.