The battery storage is not a big UPS. The battery storage provides load balancing and this helps to keep gas peaker plants off-line during peak power demand.

It is helpful to first research for hardware that is known to work well with Linux based operating systems. In particular, the graphical hardware can be a problem area due to the need for proprietary or closed source drivers. Meaning, that a successful installation and a crash free experience of a Linux distribution is dependent on avoiding certain hardware.

Linux based operating systems are a best effort solution and so there will be some hardware configurations that give trouble in being unreliable. Windows needs certified hardware in order to run reliably. However, the sets of suitable hardware for both operating systems overlap (Venn diagram) but there will be hardware that only works reliably for one of the two operating systems.

However, the status quo won't remain in place forever. Meaning that eventually, the criteria for being allowed to drive in a low emission zone will become more strict in future and there will be additional purges of now older vehicles. This will be a consequence of a ratcheting up of the minimum emission standards that a compliant vehicle has to comply with. In other words, if the minimum emission standard is currently EURO5 then there comes a point when EURO6 is declared the minimum standard. I think EURO7 is the current emission standard for new cars. I expect EURO8 to trigger low emission zones to perform a ratchet up.

But also the threshold in the UK for declaring a polluted area continues to decrease over time based on scientific data. Meaning that the goal posts have moved which caused more areas to be declared as polluted despite the actual recorded level of pollution being unchanged. The UK government was fined for breaching the pollution laws and had to take measures to reduce pollution including low emission zones.

But how many decades did it take before smoking bans were implemented? That lag in law making is common when the law is perceived as being controversial.

Another example is mandating that new cars have seat belts in 1965 in the UK, but then it took to 1983 before seat belt wearing became compulsory.

Governments have the right to ban things that harm their citizens but it can take decades getting scientific consensus and overcoming lobby groups with their vested interests.

So yes, governments can ban vehicles and take a hit on the social consequences.

In the UK, no new pure ICE cars after 2030, but there is the loophole of hybrids until 2035.

Anyway, new BEV car sales will be in the majority by 2030 so the discussion on new ICE car bans will become a moot point.

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 https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F... 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.