Hell freezes over...

[Karel]

https://buildazure.com/microsoft-linux-conference-wslconf-coming-march-2020/

http://techrights.org/2019/09/14/proprietary-software-giants-as-friends/

[ledtester]

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3438856/call-me-crazy-but-windows-11-could-run-on-linux.html

[SiliconWizard]

Just. LOL.

[FreddieChopin]

Oh you newb, embrace, extend, and extinguish is still a thing.

[Red Squirrel]

Oh you newb, embrace, extend, and extinguish is still a thing.

That's always what I wonder when it comes to MS's embracing of Linux...  I hope it's not the case though.   All they really need to do is get exclusive rights to it and then start suing all the other distros.  They have enough power to do that if they wanted to.  They just need to lobby the government to make IP law changes that make it possible.

[blacksheeplogic]

I feel windows is mainly plagued by 'windows haters' these days. Windows is actually for most users quite stable and efficient to work with. Will a Linux version make everything better, or will in introduce a lot of issues into the desktop environment I don't know, however, my Linux systems are a lot less stable and require more maintenance than my windows systems and if the user base on Linux grows so will the malware base for Linux grow.

If I had my choice of a single OS it would be AIX (stable with very little maintenance needed) but AIX lacks the software support and it's Power only. OSX was OK until Apple decides to screw with it every release and there lock in's are far worse than windows but if Windows goes Linux, Apple is probably a good indicator of how open that will end up being.

My decision on OS basically comes down to what I need on the box. I really don't care what it's called.

 

[SiliconWizard]

That's always what I wonder when it comes to MS's embracing of Linux...  I hope it's not the case though.   All they really need to do is get exclusive rights to it and then start suing all the other distros.  They have enough power to do that if they wanted to.  They just need to lobby the government to make IP law changes that make it possible.

They can't do anything against open-source licenses. That would almost imply launching a war worldwide. You have no idea about the implications.

And that said, we'll have to define what Linux IS exactly. Is that just the Linux kernel? (I think the kernel is all we could formally call Linux actually?)
The kernel itself  - there's no way MS can ever lobby anyone to get rights on that. No f*cking way. Again if they try, they'll be up against something big.

Now they could of course use the Linux kernel, and design a whole OS around it as they see fit. A bit like Google did. Is that Linux? The kernel is. The OS, we can't call it that, and Android is pretty different from any Linux distro...

If they used the Linux kernel, they would have to add tainted modules all over the place to pull off the nasty tricks they do with Windows, and some would still be pretty tough to implement without modifying the kernel itself, which would have to be shared. No way. And anyway, would that still be a "Linux" system? Even less so than Android.

They are just playing with words here, and the hype. Maybe also trying to make all the less savvy crowd hear "Linux" from their own mouths, in hopes the crowd won't be tempted to go see elsewhere. Just occupy the field, you know. "Oh you guys are comtemplating switching to Linux? That's not very nice. But look, we'll give you Linux!"

[Halcyon]

I feel windows is mainly plagued by 'windows haters' these days. Windows is actually for most users quite stable and efficient to work with.

A large part of the problem is that Windows 8 / 10 is really easy to hate and this is coming from a veteran of Windows. It's honestly the most retarded version of Windows I have *ever* used.

Over the past 12 months, I've been learning Linux and have switched to it as my daily driver just so I don't have to use Windows 10. At work, I use expensive HP Workstations and at times Windows 10 still runs like crap or glitches out for no apparent reason. Even on my less powerful (Intel i5 based PC), Windows 7 was more responsive and stable with half the amount of RAM.

[DimitriP]

Windows is actually for most users quite stable and efficient to work with.

Eeeek...you can say that about al"most" any version of windows and even DOS for that matter!!

[blacksheeplogic]

Windows is actually for most users quite stable and efficient to work with.

Eeeek...you can say that about al"most" any version of windows and even DOS for that matter!!

What is your point?

[bsfeechannel]

Windows: your next Linux distro.

[edy]

Didn't Apple Mac OS derive out of BSD unix because it was one of the few that was not originally open sourced and therefore derivatives did not have to keep open? Apple chose BSD and that way could keep things proprietary. Maybe Microsoft is looking to find some Linux code base that they can build on but other than a small core, they can keep the rest of the system proprietary. Google decided to open up Android but they don't do this with every release I don't think.

I highly doubt that Microsoft is out to replace the desktop with Linux. I think they are recognizing the efficiency when it comes to cloud services and perhaps building a framework on top for their server and cloud businesses. It will be a long time or never that I expect to see Microsoft release a "Linux" that general consumers get bundled with their PC's.... the consumer adoption of Linux is laughable, it is no threat to Microsoft. They have no reason to bother to even innovate. People will still buy the same crap over and over, they don't know better. But business cloud server where Linux makes up a huge share... that's what they are after.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Didn't Apple Mac OS derive out of BSD unix because it was one of the few that was not originally open sourced and therefore derivatives did not have to keep open? Apple chose BSD and that way could keep things proprietary.

MacOS X is a derivative of NeXTSTEP, which is a derivative of Mach/BSD. BSD wasn't chosen so Apple could keep things proprietary.

But business cloud server where Linux makes up a huge share... that's what they are after.

Linux has a huge share here because of licensing costs, not technical merit. Can you imagine how much companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon would have to pay Microsoft in licensing fees if they used Windows Server instead of Linux?

[Monkeh]

But business cloud server where Linux makes up a huge share... that's what they are after.

Linux has a huge share here because of licensing costs, not technical merit. Can you imagine how much companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon would have to pay Microsoft in licensing fees if they used Windows Server instead of Linux?

I can imagine they'd cut a very fine deal if they believed Windows had technical merit for their application..

[Red Squirrel]

To be fair, modern versions of windows actually are quite stable.  Ex: Windows 7 and up.  The issue is 8 and 10 are not exactly fun to use due to the horrid interface. Especially 8.  That is an abomination.

If MS truly wants to embrace Linux they should contribute to projects like Wine and Mono or maybe make a "lite" version of Windows without all the fluff that is Linux based but can run Windows apps with a Linux GUI like KDE.

[techman-001]

I feel windows is mainly plagued by 'windows haters' these days.

Imagine that, how unreasonable! I mean what did Microsoft *ever* do to deserve such hatred ?

Actually I can think of a few reasons :-
"Dos isn't done until Lotus won't run"
Stealing the 'doublespace' drive compression code
Breaking the Sherman Antitrust Law
Stealing the Citrix Winframe code
Stacking ECMA against Open Office
Killing Linux 'netbooks' by forcing manufacturers to limit them to 2GB Ram and small HDD size
Forcing Linux out of the Retail Channels by threatening to cancel the "Windows discount" of retailers who sold any Linux Pc's or Laptops, and threatening to sue them for breach of contract for 'damaging the Windows brand'
Claiming that Linux is a 'virus'
Raping Nokia

Just to name a few ...

[james_s]

Linux has a huge share here because of licensing costs, not technical merit. Can you imagine how much companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon would have to pay Microsoft in licensing fees if they used Windows Server instead of Linux?

Google, Amazon and Facebook are some of the wealthiest companies in the world, they could very easily afford to use Windows if they wanted to but why would they want to get locked into a proprietary OS? IIRC Google long ago banned Windows from their internal network.

Even when price is no object you'd be hard pressed to find many people at the big tech companies who would choose Windows. For web servers especially, Linux is the gold standard.

[DimitriP]

I feel windows is mainly plagued by 'windows haters' these days.

Imagine that, how unreasonable! I mean what did Microsoft *ever* do to deserve such hatred ?

Actually I can think of a few reasons :-
"Dos isn't done until Lotus won't run"
Stealing the 'doublespace' drive compression code
Breaking the Sherman Antitrust Law
Stealing the Citrix Winframe code
Stacking ECMA against Open Office
Killing Linux 'netbooks' by forcing manufacturers to limit them to 2GB Ram and small HDD size
Forcing Linux out of the Retail Channels by threatening to cancel the "Windows discount" of retailers who sold any Linux Pc's or Laptops, and threatening to sue them for breach of contract for 'damaging the Windows brand'
Claiming that Linux is a 'virus'
Raping Nokia

Just to name a few ...

Wait a minute....the statement was about "these days"    

[techman-001]

I feel windows is mainly plagued by 'windows haters' these days.

Imagine that, how unreasonable! I mean what did Microsoft *ever* do to deserve such hatred ?

Actually I can think of a few reasons :-
"Dos isn't done until Lotus won't run"
Stealing the 'doublespace' drive compression code
Breaking the Sherman Antitrust Law
Stealing the Citrix Winframe code
Stacking ECMA against Open Office
Killing Linux 'netbooks' by forcing manufacturers to limit them to 2GB Ram and small HDD size
Forcing Linux out of the Retail Channels by threatening to cancel the "Windows discount" of retailers who sold any Linux Pc's or Laptops, and threatening to sue them for breach of contract for 'damaging the Windows brand'
Claiming that Linux is a 'virus'
Raping Nokia

Just to name a few ...

Wait a minute....the statement was about "these days"

Do you think the people that learned to hate Microsoft over the last 38 years have changed their minds or got amnesia ?

They're still alive, they told their kids about Microsoft, their kids will do the same with their kids.

[bsfeechannel]

I highly doubt that Microsoft is out to replace the desktop with Linux. I think they are recognizing the efficiency when it comes to cloud services and perhaps building a framework on top for their server and cloud businesses. It will be a long time or never that I expect to see Microsoft release a "Linux" that general consumers get bundled with their PC's.... the consumer adoption of Linux is laughable, it is no threat to Microsoft. They have no reason to bother to even innovate. People will still buy the same crap over and over, they don't know better. But business cloud server where Linux makes up a huge share... that's what they are after.

Or they can do what Google have done with Linux.

[Karel]

"What do you anticipate Microsoft will do next?"

Microsoft will switch to Linux and keep selling their software on top of Linux. And it will cost the Windows users as
much as before.
At the same time will the Linux community get face-stomped by hordes of Windows users, all trying to learn everything
there is to learn about Linux and in record-breaking time.
Some long-time Linux supporters will switch to Microsoft in a heart beat like cold-hearted back-stabbers, while others die
the slow death of the White Knight in the most epic drama the Linux community has ever seen, before the Linux
community itself disappears and we will all have turned into "the new Windows user".

Once it's all done and over, and Microsoft has taken over Linux with its hordes of Windows users, will you either be the
new slave of the Microsoft empire or you will have found refuge under a tiny bridge, just next to the one where all the
FreeBSD trolls live, and where you'll then be telling tales of Linux's past.

[Zbig]

"What do you anticipate Microsoft will do next?"

Microsoft will switch to Linux and keep selling their software on top of Linux. And it will cost the Windows users as
much as before.
At the same time will the Linux community get face-stomped by hordes of Windows users, all trying to learn everything
there is to learn about Linux and in record-breaking time.
Some long-time Linux supporters will switch to Microsoft in a heart beat like cold-hearted back-stabbers, while others die
the slow death of the White Knight in the most epic drama the Linux community has ever seen, before the Linux
community itself disappears and we will all have turned into "the new Windows user".

Once it's all done and over, and Microsoft has taken over Linux with its hordes of Windows users, will you either be the
new slave of the Microsoft empire or you will have found refuge under a tiny bridge, just next to the one where all the
FreeBSD trolls live, and where you'll then be telling tales of Linux's past.

Come on, Karlík, tell us how you really feel

[DimitriP]

Do you think the people that learned to hate Microsoft over the last 38 years have changed their minds or got amnesia ?

They're still alive, they told their kids about Microsoft, their kids will do the same with their kids.

Just wanted to make sure  we establish how many "these days" are;  approximately 13870

[Yansi]

To be fair, modern versions of windows actually are quite stable.  Ex: Windows 7 and up.  The issue is 8 and 10 are not exactly fun to use due to the horrid interface. Especially 8.  That is an abomination.

If MS truly wants to embrace Linux they should contribute to projects like Wine and Mono or maybe make a "lite" version of Windows without all the fluff that is Linux based but can run Windows apps with a Linux GUI like KDE.

Yeah, Win 10 are so stable that my brand new laptop I got in my new workplace with a new clean install already throws lovely errors after a month of using.  Services crashing here and there,  failed background updates that trashed applications, even boot error occasionally showed up.

Last windows I will personally use is W7.  Then I switch likely for something else.  The UI of W10 is painful to use, extreme crap with cheap bugs all over it.

If using two staggered monitors next to each other, you can't even move mouse from one to the other going around the edge of one, because they have incorrectly programmed the conditions for checking monitor borders.  etc....

[Nominal Animal]

Linux has a huge share here because of licensing costs, not technical merit.

High-performance computing cluster ranks shows that is not true.

The only way Microsoft got to the top 500 list a few years back, was by using double the amount of hardware computation capability to other clusters with similar performance.  Windows clusters just can't compete on technical merit; there is too much overhead, even when Microsoft subsidizes all software costs and some of the hardware costs (as it did with those short-lived attempts).

So, it is definitely technical merit, not licensing costs.

[Halcyon]

Last windows I will personally use is W7.  Then I switch likely for something else.  The UI of W10 is painful to use, extreme crap with cheap bugs all over it.

Something I hear on a weekly basis. I suspect those learning/switching to Linux will continue to increase more than it already has. My personal pet peeves of using WIndows 10 at work:

• 3 different places I can find printer settings, all different depending what I'm looking for
• Windows and icons randomly resizing, just because
• The taskbar/start menu just randomly crashes and reloads, multiple times a day
• Sluggish feeling UI generally
• Updates randomly delete/remove programs without warning
• The dumbing down of the UI language... everything is now "Apps" and when loading folders "Working on it..." appears
• The Start menu... enough said
• Why do I need Settings, Personalisation, Control Panel, Computer Management AND Administrative Tools??!
• Someone actually paid money for this garbage

[SiliconWizard]

Didn't Apple Mac OS derive out of BSD unix because it was one of the few that was not originally open sourced and therefore derivatives did not have to keep open? Apple chose BSD and that way could keep things proprietary.

MacOS X is a derivative of NeXTSTEP, which is a derivative of Mach/BSD. BSD wasn't chosen so Apple could keep things proprietary.

Agree. Of course the license was a criterion: some open-source licenses would make things unworkable. The GPL is often avoided like the plague in commercial companies (not talking about the tools they use of course, but about parts of their products.) Too many implications.

But yes, there were many technical reasons first.
And the assertion about keeping things proprietary? It's even inexact. Darwin, the core operating system of MacOS X, was released as open source by Apple. They kept proprietary only higher-level stuff.

[magic]

I wonder how many people who say that Windows 8 made them quit have used Windows 98 before, the actual best version of Windows ever?

I knew I'm out of the Windows world as soon as XP told me that there are some "system files" I'm not allowed to open and some "protected media content" which means that all kernel drivers need to be signed by M$, for its protection

[blacksheeplogic]

This thread for the most part is nothing but personal ranting and smart ass comments 'I don't like Microsoft' whine. There's nothing, no discussion in this thread about how Linux is going to benefit the general user base, it's all about being personal bias against windows.

I use both Windows and Linux on a daily basis, Linux is not rock solid and Windows is not crashing every few minutes. In fact I have to perform maintenance on Linux far more often than Windows and in the last 3 months have had to reinstall Linux due to unrecoverable errors that took hours of screwing around. I haven't been forced to reinstall Windows in the last couple of years.

I agree with several of the comments on the UI in windows 10 being worse than prior version, but that's personal preference and the UI is not unusable, in fact I don't spend my entire day clicking on icons and admiring the UI, I've got work to do.

I think there could be a good discussion on desktop technology and maybe some good discussions on bringing the desktop computing choices closer together. We also have what I think is a lack of support for currently non-mainstream platforms, but how do you have these conversations when the forums full of hobbiests with their personal bias who think there dicks will grow one size bigger by jumping on the Linux bandwagon. So as typical with these threads on Linux we get yet another I hate windows, I hate Microsoft, Linux is cool thread.

I use the operating system I'm most comfortable with for the given task at hand. I'm not going to switch all my systems over to Linux just to be cool or just 'case you think Microsoft is a bad company, I need benefits to any investment I make and it needs to be expressed in $/time. I would like to see a convergence of the desktop environment but I'm not going to give Linux my vote just because a bunch of people bash Windows and think Linux is the best. - give me non-emotive reasons.


 

[techman-001]

I wonder how many people who say that Windows 8 made them quit have used Windows 98 before, the actual best version of Windows ever?

I knew I'm out of the Windows world as soon as XP told me that there are some "system files" I'm not allowed to open and some "protected media content" which means that all kernel drivers need to be signed by M$, for its protection

Really ?
Do you mean the Windows 98 that bricked Windows 95 Pc's everywhere when they tried to upgrade to W98 ?

I stopped using Windows 95 in August of 1997 when after dual booting Windows and Linux since 1995 I had a motherboard failure and replaced the motherboard.

Linux booted as usual and two weeks later when I booted into Windows 95 for the first time since the motherboard swap there were errors and warnings galore and no Windows!

That was the last time I used Windows. I sold my W95 CD for $50 to a company that was worried about local BSAA raids and wanted more official Windows CD's 'just to be sure we are compliant'.

My computing life has been smooth as silk ever since!

[techman-001]

This thread for the most part is nothing but personal ranting and smart ass comments 'I don't like Microsoft' whine. There's nothing, no discussion in this thread about how Linux is going to benefit the general user base, it's all about being personal bias against windows.

That's true, and you're a perfect example of a Windows fanboy ranting about your favorite white goods OS.

Personally I couldn't care less what you use, you can fight Windows for the rest of your life trying to do something useful with it, be my guest.

Just remember, knocking Unix won't make Windows any better.

[Mr. Scram]

I wonder how many people who say that Windows 8 made them quit have used Windows 98 before, the actual best version of Windows ever?

I knew I'm out of the Windows world as soon as XP told me that there are some "system files" I'm not allowed to open and some "protected media content" which means that all kernel drivers need to be signed by M$, for its protection

It's great to see people complain about that while also complaining about running Windows as root by default. It illustrates how any choice is always wrong.

[SiliconWizard]

I wonder how many people who say that Windows 8 made them quit have used Windows 98 before, the actual best version of Windows ever?

I knew I'm out of the Windows world as soon as XP told me that there are some "system files" I'm not allowed to open and some "protected media content" which means that all kernel drivers need to be signed by M$, for its protection

It's great to see people complain about that while also complaining about running Windows as root by default. It illustrates how any choice is always wrong.

Yeah, people always complain.

[Mr. Scram]

That's true, and you're a perfect example of a Windows fanboy ranting about your favorite white goods OS.

Personally I couldn't care less what you use, you can fight Windows for the rest of your life trying to do something useful with it, be my guest.

Just remember, knocking Unix won't make Windows any better.

He isn't "knocking Unix" but actually expressing a fairly nuanced view. You're just outing yourself as the unreasonable one but there really is no need to bully opinions not fully aligned with yours in every thread.

[maginnovision]

Just remember, knocking Unix won't make Windows any better.

Who do you think you are and what do you think you are doing?

He'll know that first part but judging from his conversations elsewhere on these forums... He's clueless as to the second.

[Halcyon]

Do you mean the Windows 98 that bricked Windows 95 Pc's everywhere when they tried to upgrade to W98 ?

That was mistake number one. Upgrades were usually crap. You're always better off backing up your data, formatting and reinstalling Windows from scratch which you could still do using the "Upgrade CD-ROM", it just asked you to insert a "qualifying product" so it could check it upon installation.

The most stable and responsive versions of Windows ever were:

• Windows for Workgroups 3.11
• Windows 95c
• Windows 98se
• Windows 2000
• Windows XP
• Windows 7

Sadly, this is where the list ends and I suspect for good. I would sooner run Vista than Windows 10. Windows 10 has become a joke operating system, but one people are forced to use (mainly at work) because switching to anything else would be just too hard for the IT department.

[bsfeechannel]

I haven't been forced to reinstall Windows in the last couple of years.

I haven't been forced to reinstall Linux in the last 20 years.

[NiHaoMike]

I haven't been forced to reinstall Linux in the last 20 years.

What distro are you using that always seamlessly migrates to new hardware, including the transition to 64 bit?

[bsfeechannel]

I haven't been forced to reinstall Linux in the last 20 years.

What distro are you using that always seamlessly migrates to new hardware, including the transition to 64 bit?

Did I say that?

[Simon]

I feel windows is mainly plagued by 'windows haters' these days. Windows is actually for most users quite stable and efficient to work with. Will a Linux version make everything better, or will in introduce a lot of issues into the desktop environment I don't know, however, my Linux systems are a lot less stable and require more maintenance than my windows systems and if the user base on Linux grows so will the malware base for Linux grow.

If I had my choice of a single OS it would be AIX (stable with very little maintenance needed) but AIX lacks the software support and it's Power only. OSX was OK until Apple decides to screw with it every release and there lock in's are far worse than windows but if Windows goes Linux, Apple is probably a good indicator of how open that will end up being.

My decision on OS basically comes down to what I need on the box. I really don't care what it's called.

 

So why does this peice of junk remove my programs when it updates? I liked windows 10 when I came out. Now it's a pile of crap. For one thing I feel like I don't own my own hardware any more as I am told what to do and what programs I may have. If only there was a serious linux distro that software makers would support. The free and open nature of linux has made it it's own worse enemy. The answer most software houses have to "which of the thousands of distro's shall we support" is NONE, it's too much of a headache keeping people happy that can't even agree which distro is good.

Linus Torvades made the biggest mistake ever when he decided to let anyone use it for free and do what they like with it. And then he says he can't understand why it has not had any uptake on desktops. The answer is staring him in the face but he is too narrow minded to see what is staring him in the face.

[magic]

Moving to a different CPU ISA is one legitimate case when you may want to reinstall Linux.

Though if you stay with the same distribution, you can easily export the list of installed packages and reinstall them on the new system, getting more or less the same thing you started with. Copy over some files from /etc and $HOME and you are set.

Within the same architecture, I have moved Linux systems between computer by cp -ax / /mnt/new, adjusting a few files in /etc and installing bootloader on the new disk. I assure you that's not a problem. And if you don't remember what configuration needs adjustment, just try to boot and see where it craps out

edit

Code: [Select]

$ ls -lt /etc | tail -n3
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    2146 2010-10-10  kismet_drone.conf
-rw-r--r--  1 root root       0 2010-04-23  odbc.ini
-rw-r--r--  1 root root       0 2010-04-23  odbcinst.ini
$ uptime
 08:29:51 up 319 days, 16:42,  0 users,  load average: 0,79, 0,75, 0,57

[TerraHertz]

Oh you newb, embrace, extend, and extinguish is still a thing.

This. If you think Microsoft has changed its stripes and is now trying to be helpful, you are ignorant of the history of that corporation.
Microsoft wants one thing: To OWN the entire computing ecology. For multiple, deeply rooted ideological reasons.
* To 'close the box', taking away any user ability to access inner workings of the system - hardware and software both. MS needs to do this, in order to be able to ramp up their profits via pay-per-view and rental software DRM models.
* To control and monitor users. Sky is the limit for spyware when users cannot observe or even influence what is running deep in your machine.
* To obfuscate even user-exposed system workings more and more. All the better to charge a lot for 'MS certified engineer' certificates. Which expire! Supposedly MS makes most of their income from these courses. (But they'd rather it was from DRM payments, since _everyone_ will have to pay those.)
* To be able to permanently brick your computing platform any time MS decide they don't like what they are seeing/hearing via the spyware & backdoors.
* To gradually degrade the computing facilities available to the public. Incrementally increasing system complexity and obfuscation, removing capabilities, worsening the UI as much as they can - they try extreme shit then step back a little to pretend they are listening to complaints, then make it still worse next time.  Win8 being an example of severe deliberate crippling, Win10 being the pretended softening - but at the same time it's even more of a Trojan Horse now.

MS has been trying hard to lock Linux out of the desktop. What do you think 'secure boot', UEFI etc were about?
That plan wasn't going so well, since too much hardware could still run Linux.
Now MS is playing embrace, extend and extinguish. Any appearance of friendly intent towards Linux is deception.
Where was that thread about most Linux distros becoming chaotic and incompatible with older software? With BSD one exception, because it's controlled by old traditionalists. What do you think is another word for 'embrace'? How about 'infiltrate'? This is the huge weak point of open source crowd-managed code. It only takes a small percentage of deliberate saboteurs to turn it all to crap, pretty rapidly. Fronting such an effort is trivial for MS.

Oh, and MS bought Github. Yeah right, for the greater good. Ha ha ha. Suckers.

[magic]

no discussion in this thread about how Linux is going to benefit the general user base

It won't benefit anyone. When the general user base gets their hands on a Linux system, it's locked down even worse than Windows. That's the beauty of Open Sores, anyone can use it for any purpose, including evil corporation living off of milking the general user base.
Linux and BSD have been a disaster for the general user base, allowing unprecedented exploitation and lockdown thanks to their technological superiority

I think there could be a good discussion on desktop technology and maybe some good discussions on bringing the desktop computing choices closer together.

What? Hell no. I didn't quit Windows for any "convergence of desktop environments"

It's great to see people complain about that while also complaining about running Windows as root by default. It illustrates how any choice is always wrong.

A subtle difference exists between running everything as root and being able to edit anything when logged in as root
That being said, I ran WinDOS 98 SE as root all the time and was a happy user. I don't do it on Linux because that's how it's configured by default and I don't care enough to go against the current.

Oh, and MS bought Github. Yeah right, for the greater good.

You have a bigger problem than Microsoft buying them out if you trust free candy from the Silicon Valley van. Their whole ethos is "entrepreneurship", understood as combining the fine practices of dumping and rent seeking.
It's a bunch of old rich guys with more money than ideas to invest it who found useful figureheads in young idealists thinking that they can improve the world by creating new ways of sharing funny cat videos on the Internet.
It's always been about selling out one way or another.

[Monkeh]

Linus Torvades made the biggest mistake ever when he decided to let anyone use it for free and do what they like with it.

It would not exist in its current, extraordinarily useful form if he hadn't.

[Simon]

Linus Torvades made the biggest mistake ever when he decided to let anyone use it for free and do what they like with it.

It would not exist in its current, extraordinarily useful form if he hadn't.

But it's useless to the average user. The only people using Linux are linux fanatics or people that just need to brows the web. Linus has no interest in anything but the kernel. So actually it is not a unified system.

The usual answer to any issue is to go fix it myself as though the average linux user can code. Obviously you have to be a coder to use linux.......

[Monkeh]

Linus Torvades made the biggest mistake ever when he decided to let anyone use it for free and do what they like with it.

It would not exist in its current, extraordinarily useful form if he hadn't.

But it's useless to the average user. The only people using Linux are linux fanatics or people that just need to brows the web. Linus has no interest in anything but the kernel. So actually it is not a unified system.

You talk about Linus being narrow minded, and the only thing on your mind is the 'average user'. Pot, kettle. And who claimed anything about a unified system, anyway?

The usual answer to any issue is to go fix it myself as though the average linux user can code. Obviously you have to be a coder to use linux.......

Well if you're not willing to pay other people to do the work, clearly you'll have to do it yourself. Or do you really expect absolutely everything to be done the way you want it for free?

[bd139]

Simon's not wrong though. Even as a Linux admin I use windows...

[Simon]

@Monkeh

No you are putting words in my mouth. Linus torvades stated that he was surprised that while he created Linux for the desktop environment is has not made it into the desktop market. He also stated that he is not interested in distros. This means that every man and his dog is making up distro's, there are I beleive thousands but 10 different distro's is more than enought to discourage software makers from supporting linux. People write commercial software for MAC's so why not linux? it is because it would be a nightmare to support. Without a unified system no one will support it other than enthusiasts. I do not choose an OS because I am a fanatic about it and want to change it. i chose an OS so that i can run programs and do what i want to do. A computer is not an end to itself for most users, it is a tool to get a job done.

i don't have a problem paying for software. I am now using the free KiCAD having spend £2000 on all the other software and decided that I WANT to use KiCAD over other programs. i don't have a problem paying for Linux, but once i have it what can I run on it? I pay for cPanel on my own server, I could do it for free but I did not want to code my own solutions and do not know where to start so i chose to PAY so that i got something that I can USE rather than have to spend all of my time creating something to do the thing i want to do.

[nctnico]

different distro's is more than enought to discourage software makers from supporting linux. People write commercial software for MAC's so why not linux? it is because it would be a nightmare to support.

Sorry but that isn't true. There are lots of big companies who offer Linux versions (I'm actually taking a short break from routing a board using Orcad PCB Editor/Allegro running on Linux).  The reason Microsoft is moving towards Linux is because Linux has already gained major traction in the engineering sector. Windows is quickly becoming an OS for typewriters.

Usually a limited number of distributions are supported. Mostly Debian/Ubuntu and Redhat. But in reality the underlying libraries and software are the same so you can get most software to run on any Linux distribution.

[Simon]

But in reality the underlying libraries and software are the same so you can get most software to run on any Linux distribution.

So to be clear that means that even though a distro is not officially supported it will work regardless?

[techman-001]

Linus Torvades made the biggest mistake ever when he decided to let anyone use it for free and do what they like with it.

It would not exist in its current, extraordinarily useful form if he hadn't.

But it's useless to the average user. The only people using Linux are linux fanatics or people that just need to brows the web. Linus has no interest in anything but the kernel. So actually it is not a unified system.

The usual answer to any issue is to go fix it myself as though the average linux user can code. Obviously you have to be a coder to use linux.......

I've seen this type of argument over the last 40 years and I believe that there is no such thing as a 'average user' when it comes to computing.

I believe there are only USERS and ADMINS.

USERS do what they have been trained to do to use programs on a computer, spreadsheet, browser or click a menu on a car production line and fit a seat for example. If the computer doesn't work, they need the help of a admin.

ADMINS understand the computer, operating systems and programs they can diagnose problems and fix them.

Whether the Computer is Linux, Mac or Windows,  these roles and specialties are exactly the same.

It's just more Windows FUD that Windows USERS are also ADMINS by some incredible magic property of Microsoft. They're not, in fact Linux users are far more knowledgeable than Windows users who are far more knowledgeable than MAC users about the computers and software they use .... in general.

Enough of this ridiculous assertion that Windows is in any way superior to anything ... it's not. Windows is only marketed better, it is just another product shoved down your throat by highly paid sales and marketing experts who work for a company that has made trillions of dollars selling white goods to the unwashed masses.

Linux by comparison does not market anything, it is just a kernel. If you want to build a Linux Workstation, you'll need to be a Linux admin, and if you're a Linux admin, you will have no problems.

[Simon]

Who said windows was superior. Windows has one thing only going for it: world dominance. The question is why can't a competitor achieve something near that. I am not an admin on my windows computer at work. If you think my employer wants to go through the nightmare of getting programs to work on their chosen distro that is hopefully supported by the progrm then think again. Even people willing to pay money are reluctant to touch Linux.

My Dad struggles with windows, can you imagine him on linux where doing anything requires a command line. For some reason command lisne stuff is the only way to go but that is because it is not intuitive like the graphical settings panels of windows. This means that only some people know how to do anything important making them important. Home users do not want any of that shit.

[Monkeh]

My Dad struggles with windows, can you imagine him on linux where doing anything requires a command line. For some reason command lisne stuff is the only way to go but that is because it is not intuitive like the graphical settings panels of windows. This means that only some people know how to do anything important making them important. Home users do not want any of that shit.

Intuitive? Windows? It takes half an hour to find the actual settings they've tried to hide behind fancy new phone-style interfaces, and when you do half of it is broken anyway.

And no, the use of a command line to do things on Linux is not to 'make people important' - it's because it's easy to implement, functional, and portable. People have better things to do than write a 15 layer deep GUI interface to toggle a setting.

[Simon]

GUI's are user friendly. that is why windows became popular.

[bd139]

Intuitive? Windows? It takes half an hour to find the actual settings they've tried to hide behind fancy new phone-style interfaces, and when you do half of it is broken anyway.

And no, the use of a command line to do things on Linux is not to 'make people important' - it's because it's easy to implement, functional, and portable. People have better things to do than write a 15 layer deep GUI interface to toggle a setting.

I've got to laugh about that because despite windows being a pile of crap, dotfiles, DSLs and meta-languages galore. That's all I'm saying. I'm pretty adept at arguing with them but I don't like having several of them in my head.

As for the command line, it's filled with nuances galore.

The main advantages of Linux are: free, it stays like you left it, everything is transparent enough for it to support full automation. Pretty it is not!

[Simon]

The general public like pretty and easy. The general public do not use Linux. I would not use linux for linux, I would use it as another choice of OS to windows because i am struggling with the worlds most dominant OS.

[Nominal Animal]

Even as a Linux admin I use windows...

Does that say more about you or Linux? 

(I don't have a clear opinion on that. I know others like you; some Linux admins who use Macs but detest windows; and some like myself who (almost) exclusively use Linux; but not many enough to see any tendencies.  I do know that people, myself included, project our preferences, as if they were the consequence of the quality of the tools we have.  We humans are excellent at that sort of delusions.)

[Nominal Animal]

The general public like pretty and easy. The general public do not use Linux. I would not use linux for linux, I would use it as another choice of OS to windows because i am struggling with the worlds most dominant OS.

How are you struggling with Android?

[rstofer]

Linux has a huge share here because of licensing costs, not technical merit. Can you imagine how much companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon would have to pay Microsoft in licensing fees if they used Windows Server instead of Linux?

Linux is not a huge share anywhere.  It is running on less than 2% of desktops worldwide.  More that 25 years in the market, priced for free and they can't even give it away!  There are a number of reasons for this!

I have it on a desktop and a couple of laptops plus, of course, some Raspberry Pi's but I actually USE Win 7 and Win 10.  The Linux desktops don't get used all that often.

[nctnico]

But in reality the underlying libraries and software are the same so you can get most software to run on any Linux distribution.

So to be clear that means that even though a distro is not officially supported it will work regardless?

Yes because every distro uses the same software under the hood. And most software vendors are smart enough to provide their own libraries with their software instead on depending on what is actually installed on the machine itself. So if you have a working kernel, basic C library and -if it is a program with a GUI- a working X-windows install then every piece of Linux software should just work.

[Monkeh]

Linux has a huge share here because of licensing costs, not technical merit. Can you imagine how much companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon would have to pay Microsoft in licensing fees if they used Windows Server instead of Linux?

Linux is not a huge share anywhere.

Nonsense. Check the context of what you're quoting.

More that 25 years in the market, priced for free and they can't even give it away!  There are a number of reasons for this!

Yeah, they can't even give it away. It's only on a few billion devices. And nearly every supercomputer.

[nctnico]

Linux has a huge share here because of licensing costs, not technical merit. Can you imagine how much companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon would have to pay Microsoft in licensing fees if they used Windows Server instead of Linux?

Linux is not a huge share anywhere.

Please quit this nonsense. Repeating it doesn't make it true. Linux is so big in engineering that all major software companies have or are working on Linux versions of their software. They are doing this because customers want it and they are losing sales.

[james_s]

Indeed, the only place where Linux does not have a large share is the consumer desktop (and laptop) segment. When Joe Consumer needs a computer, they go to Walmart, Costco, Best Buy, Amazon, etc and buy one and it almost invariably comes with Windows. The average person just doesn't care, they use what it comes with and when it breaks they dump it and buy a new one. The other big reason is gaming, Windows still offers the best game support by a wide margin, this may change at some point but for the time being Linux is likely to remain small on the consumer desktop.

Everywhere else is a completely different story. The largest and wealthiest tech companies in the world with exception of Microsoft itself are mostly on Linux on the back end and in engineering.

[Monkeh]

Indeed, the only place where Linux does not have a large share is the consumer desktop (and laptop) segment. When Joe Consumer needs a computer, they go to Walmart, Costco, Best Buy, Amazon, etc and buy one and it almost invariably comes with Windows.

And with Microsoft's well established anti-competitive behaviour in this market that's no surprise. Should some company decide to try and make a single GUI to rule the *nix world and market it, Microsoft will swiftly attempt to wreck it. Several companies, including Dell, have made efforts to offer Linux as an option and it was made financially unviable.. by Microsoft.

[bsfeechannel]

The only people using Linux are linux fanatics or people that just need to brows the web.

I use Linux because the alternative has nothing better to offer. I do just about everything anyone else who uses Windows does. From video editing to desktop publishing.

For the record, several of my computers are dual boot. I occasionally run Windows to update it once or twice a year and that's it.

If there were any compelling reason to use Windows, I would have ditched Linux long ago.

Linus has no interest in anything but the kernel. So actually it is not a unified system.

If you think Linux is not dominant on the desktop because of the lack of unity or Linus Torvalds restricted interest,  you need more information.

Read Wired Magazine's "The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth", published in November 2000.

My favorite part in this long article is this:

In 1995, as Paul Maritz' 26-year-old technical assistant, Chris Jones had been among the Microsoft contingent that attended the infamous June meeting at Netscape. Jones claimed that nothing untoward had happened there. Indeed, he told me that the very idea that he'd been part of some "Microsoft mafia" trying to intimidate Netscape into dividing the browser market was "ludicrous" on its face. The Microsoft team was made up mostly of junior-level staff like him. The Netscape side was led by Barksdale, an "impressive guy who'd been doing business for a long time." Jones said, "I think the perspectives on who was being intimidated in that meeting differ." Taken at face value, the comment was a telling reflection of the insularity of the Microsoft culture. Regardless of Barksdale's age and experience, Netscape was a money-losing startup, and Microsoft was—well, Microsoft. When Jones walked in the door, what the Netscape people saw wasn't some 26-year-old kid; they saw a 26-year-old kid who spoke for Maritz, one of the most powerful executives in the software industry.

And that was how the DOJ saw Jones too.

The bold letters are mine.

Netscape was a disrupting technology at the time. I have this issue of Wired Magazine in print.

The usual answer to any issue is to go fix it myself as though the average linux user can code. Obviously you have to be a coder to use linux.......

This is the same answer I get as an average Windows user when Windows doesn't work. If Windows misbehave there's not a Microsoft hot-line I can dial to to make a tech knock at my door in half an hour with a smile and a tool kit to solve the problem in five minutes.

Last week I spent two hours on the net trying to find a solution to make a specific application to agree with Windows. To no avail.

The same application runs smoothly on Linux without any need for adjustments or tinkering with registries. I value my time.

[bd139]

Even as a Linux admin I use windows...

Does that say more about you or Linux? 

(I don't have a clear opinion on that. I know others like you; some Linux admins who use Macs but detest windows; and some like myself who (almost) exclusively use Linux; but not many enough to see any tendencies.  I do know that people, myself included, project our preferences, as if they were the consequence of the quality of the tools we have.  We humans are excellent at that sort of delusions.)

I was a Mac user for a long time. Had a top of the line 15" retina MBP. Then I bust the screen and found it cost more than a ThinkPad  . Figured I'd just flog it and buy a MacBook Air but that went back to Apple within 2 weeks because they keyboard ffuucckkeed uppp wiiith thhhiiiss hoorrribblle key duplication issue

It made a good large screen multimeter though



Main reason it's windows on a thinkpad it's the only thing that runs LTspice, Office, iTunes and doesn't give me a rash (macs do that).

Also wise move: never take your work home. And that's Linux 

[Halcyon]

But in reality the underlying libraries and software are the same so you can get most software to run on any Linux distribution.

So to be clear that means that even though a distro is not officially supported it will work regardless?

For the most part, yes. When I switched from Windows to Linux, I only had to find substitutes for a small number of programs, everything else had a native Linux version.

Linux is not a huge share anywhere.  It is running on less than 2% of desktops worldwide.  More that 25 years in the market, priced for free and they can't even give it away!  There are a number of reasons for this!

In the consumer market, yes Linux has a small (but significant) share, but if you look at the trend over the last few years, that market share has been on a steady increase. Even some gamers are taking up Linux as their primary operating system. Windows 10 isn't the only reason for this, but it's a pretty big one. There are many people out there willing to learn an entirely new "ecosystem" just to avoid using Windows 10 and I'm one of those people.

But it's useless to the average user. The only people using Linux are linux fanatics or people that just need to brows the web.

I wouldn't say that at all. With Distos like Ubuntu, Mint, Manjaro, Fedora and others, installing and using the system is easy. My best mates wife uses Linux because that's what's on the family computer and finds it simple to navigate. Gone are the days where you have to use command line to do simple tasks or compile your own drivers/software. I'd even go as far as saying that the Applications menu in XFCE is far simpler and cleaner than the Windows 10 start menu.

[techman-001]

Linux has a huge share here because of licensing costs, not technical merit. Can you imagine how much companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon would have to pay Microsoft in licensing fees if they used Windows Server instead of Linux?

Linux is not a huge share anywhere.  It is running on less than 2% of desktops worldwide.  More that 25 years in the market, priced for free and they can't even give it away!  There are a number of reasons for this!

Agreed,  on the Desktop, Windows dominates, you are totally correct but the *actual* reason is very well known, it is no mystery.

The *only* reason that Linux is not utterly dominant on desktops everywhere is because of the illegal monopoly stranglehold of Microsoft in the retail PC market.

There is NO other reason.

You can walk into any tech store and buy Windows PC's and Laptops with Windows pre-installed and working and it has always been that way. While you're in the same store, look for the Linux alternatives, where are they ?

Where are the preinstalled Linux PC's and laptops, the one that are CHEAPER than the Windows ones on the same hardware because Linux is Free ?

They are nowhere to be seen, Microsoft will either withdraw that retailers 'Windows discount' or sue them for 'breach of contract' if they offer Linux alongside Windows.

If anyone wants a pre-installed Linux PC or Laptop on the same hardware that they can buy Windows on, they have to build it themselves ... if they can get thru the layers of Windows only hardware lock-in that Microsoft has so carefully put in place.

If they want a laptop, they will have to buy a laptop with Windows preinstalled and wipe it to do so and Microsoft gets a sale anyway, this is well known as the "Windows Tax".

Linux is "not a huge share anywhere",  seriously ?

What OS utterly dominates in the Mobile Phone market ?    (Android) Linux.
What OS totally dominates on tablets ?  (android) Linux
What OS totally dominates on Chromebooks ? Linux
What OS totally dominates in routers, WiFi Ap's, managed switches, IoT devices, car infotainment, airline infotainment, gps devices ?    ... Embedded Linux
What OS totally dominates in the cloud ? Linux
What OS is Google built on ? Linux
Even the Arduino system you love so much is GPL licensed because it was developed using Linux components.

I could go on, hopefully you will get the idea.

[bsfeechannel]

Among some very essential Chinese tools (in China), only WPS and WeChat offer multi-OS with usable capability and stability. 9 out of 10 Chinese online banking services require an ActiveX or Windows version of Firefox/Chrome password widget in DLL format.

Fortunately, in the free world we have other options.

Windows is much less bloated than Linux, at least than a typical out of the box desktop Linux for noobs. You can certainly get a cleaner system by using Arch or Gentoo, but I would stick to noob Linux like Fedora or Ubuntu.

Let's see. I have Windows and Linux on this machine. I absolutely stripped down the Windows installation, leaving only very few applications, cleaned and defragmented the HD. No office, no nothing. It occupies 33GB. It takes forever to boot and and runs like a snail.

Linux, after 8 years of continuous use and the installation of countless applications, occupies just 9GB. Runs fast and works with simply whatever hardware I connect to the computer.

So in my dictionary the definition of bloat is when an almost useless OS is almost four times larger and way slower that a fully functional OS plenty of running apps.

I give up my partial freedom of speech

Never seen someone so proud of losing their civil rights.

[Black Phoenix]

Guys, guys, off topic but can we please stick to the topic in question and left the politics aside?

It exist a topic here that is already heavy politics about the trade war, so can we keep the rest of the forum without ideologies?

Thank you.

[bsfeechannel]

We have a uniform Windows fleet, so software R&D cost can be cheaper than doing that thrice, so we use more up to date software while relinquishing rights of choice. I'm okay with that.

This is news. A monopoly striving to outperform itself? Thought that's the job of competition. I need to rethink my concepts.

Since when speed is a function to size?

Who said that?

1TB SSD is nowadays less than $100, so who cares?

You do. You said Linux is bloated, i.e., inflated, swollen, dilated. I showed it is not.

My macOS boots in 20 seconds with a 1TB SSD, and the Windows it runs boots in 5 seconds within it. FYI, Ubuntu takes ~10s to boot using the same hypervisor (Parallels 14).

Even after Windows gives you a screen, it keeps booting. It keeps running something that occupies the CPU for quite some time.

I always use a fast computer (never more than 3 yrs old, mostly less than 2 yrs old before being used as a home server, then sold), so my pursue is absolute fast on good hardware, not "not sluggish" on a slow computer.

So, in 3 years time your computer will be sluggish. Your computer runs Windows.

In 8 years time my computer will still be fast. My computer runs Linux.

Conclusion: Windows is the worst addition to your hardware.

MOD: Content removed

[bsfeechannel]

Guys, guys, off topic but can we please stick to the topic in question and left the politics aside?

It exist a topic here that is already heavy politics about the trade war, so can we keep the rest of the forum without ideologies?

Thank you.

He started it! 

[bsfeechannel]

No. We are discussing the relation between Microsoft and Linux. You are discussing your only topic: China.

[bsfeechannel]

I recommend you to learn what is natural monopoly, and to see why electrical energy market in California is a disaster. A classic freedom over efficiency disaster.

"Natural" monopolies are heavily regulated. Microsoft are not a natural monopoly. They are a competitor just like any other.

Bloated in terms of speed, not in terms of size. Windows is huge because it stores all versions of differently optimized DLLs for different versions together to get the optimum efficiency. That's called side by side, or SxS.

This is called marketing speak. Linux is faster and has a smaller footprint in the HD and memory than Windows. Windows requires much faster (and expensive) hardware to be on par with Linux.

The logical conclusion is that Linux is more efficient. However, in the marketing reality distortion field, all of this bloatware is necessary because Windows is "optimally efficient". You, Microsoft and I know that this is bullshit.

So what? I can run programs, that's what I care about. And FYI, I never had to fear a system upgrade nukes my system with Windows, despite the rumors. update-grub gave me more than countable grieves.

Well. I think I have been luckier than you. I've never had a problem with update-grub.

When you get LO or OOo the same speed of MS Office then we can then talk.
Or any other editor rest of VIM faster than NP++.
Or just any games in OGL faster than DX.

Congratulations. You finally found a niche for Windows.

I'll stop replying political posts.

That's more like it.

[Karel]

Some facts:

1. Linux is the most used operating system in the world.

2. If you take Android out of the equation, Linux is still the most used operating system in the world.
    (Even on MS Azure, more than 50% of the instances are running/using linux....)

3. The only place where Linux isn't king, is the traditional desktop.

[EEVblog]

Guys, guys, off topic but can we please stick to the topic in question and left the politics aside?
It exist a topic here that is already heavy politics about the trade war, so can we keep the rest of the forum without ideologies?
Thank you.

He started it! 

Quit it bsfeechannel I just had to edit your post to remove content you know damn well is not tolerated here. Do not post this stuff again. IIRC this is not the first time you've been warned about such material.

[Black Phoenix]

Linux will be a great alternative in the future when apps currently supported on Windows release stable versions for Linux, then yes you will have a big influx of new users.

The problem is that apps like Office, Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere, Catia, Autocad and others are not available because there aren't a big expression of users in the Linux ecosystem so software houses don't produce said apps, the users don't migrate because such apps don't exist, then the aren't a big expression of users in the Linux ecosystem... See were I go here.

I've been as stated in another post using dual boot Windows 10 / Fedora 30. It's true that currently I can say that almost a month before I can count by my right hand's fingers the times that I booted on Windows.

That times was basically only to play games. Yes steam is already supported on Linux, although not all games I own have a linux version. And no, I don't want to use Wine. I simply boot the Windows.

As I stated I will migrate progressively more and more to Linux but I still have lot's of ropes that tie me to the Windows Ecosystem. And mainly I miss Windows XP or Server 2003 (I was a MCSE for both). Simple, functional, no frills and powerful.

Had Microsoft release this OS now in Open Source GNU licence nowadays, and watching from what happened with Linux Distros and what users were able to accomplish, the sky would be the limit!

But that's the can of worms that I'm going to open, and that will for sure backfire...

[bsfeechannel]

Why should it be regulated if it didn't get the privileges true natural monopoly companies received?
No government said thou shalt use Windows, right?

Natural monopolies are regulated because they can use their privileged position to commit abuses.

Enlighten me. I see SxS just an elaborated method of implementing the DLL hell, just more sophisticated than libxxx.so.n method.

Even if SxS be perceived as elaborated, this doesn't change the fact that Linux runs faster and demand less expensive hardware to do what Windows do.

Do you understand, now?

Word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, gaming and coding are certainly not niche. Let alone many proprietary tools only available for Windows.

I would say you just found your niche for Linux.

As I said. I do all of that with Linux. It works, runs fast, saves me time. I see no use for Windows and all the hassle that goes with it.

[bsfeechannel]

Quit it bsfeechannel I just had to edit your post to remove content you know damn well is not tolerated here. Do not post this stuff again.

Sorry. I got carried away by the heat of the discussion. Thank you for the warning.

IIRC this is not the first time you've been warned about such material.

I've never posted such material before.

[bsfeechannel]

I just don't think how Linux can beat Windows on desktop market in any reliably foreseeable future.

You said the word: market. Linux had to have a company, like Google or the sorts, to push the OS on the desktop.

The thing is that the barrier to entry the desktop market, i.e., the costs and obstacles that prevent new competitors from easily entering this business, is high.

Discussing why Linux is not the king of the desktop on technical terms is useless. Even if we had the fastest, most stable, most functional desktop OS today, we couldn't beat the clunky Windows, without pouring tons of money in the enterprise.

[Simon]

I just don't think how Linux can beat Windows on desktop market in any reliably foreseeable future.

You said the word: market. Linux had to have a company, like Google or the sorts, to push the OS on the desktop.

The thing is that the barrier to entry the desktop market, i.e., the costs and obstacles that prevent new competitors from easily entering this business, is high.

Discussing why Linux is not the king of the desktop on technical terms is useless. Even if we had the fastest, most stable, most functional desktop OS today, we couldn't beat the clunky Windows, without pouring tons of money in the enterprise.

Not really, the world just needs to settle on one version so that all software makers know what to write their software for.

[bsfeechannel]

Not really, the world just needs to settle on one version so that all software makers know what to write their software for.

Even if the Linux and OSS community decided to settle on one version, you can't beat Windows on the desktop market.

Is Linux viable on the desktop? A huge yes. I am the living proof of that. 20 years using Linux for absolutely everything.

Can Linux beat Windows on the desktop market? A huge no.

[Simon]

who said anything about beating? A viable option would be a start. You either are at android level and want something to do one thing only or you are determined to use Linux.

[bsfeechannel]

Android tablets run Linux and they have tons of applications (including Microsoft apps like Office and Skype). Try to think why we are not running Android on the desktop.

[Simon]

I don't know what androids capability are.

[nctnico]

Linux just can't get to that point. The UI subsystem is just too bloated to compete the efficiency of Windows, and OGL is just not comparable with DX.

I'm getting the feeling you never used Linux at all. Linux is definetely faster than Windows including the GUI. Try changing from one window to another on Windows and Linux. Windows is laggy especially when run from a hard-drive. Linux is instant no matter the system load. Also try to compile software on Windows. It is 5 to 10 times slower. If you are a power user which needs to be productive then Linux definitely is the better choice.

[nctnico]

I just don't think how Linux can beat Windows on desktop market in any reliably foreseeable future.

You said the word: market. Linux had to have a company, like Google or the sorts, to push the OS on the desktop.

The thing is that the barrier to entry the desktop market, i.e., the costs and obstacles that prevent new competitors from easily entering this business, is high.

The point is rather moot because the desktop PC market is shrinking anyway. What use is there to invest in a market which is shrinking? I don't think Microsoft is making any money from Windows directly; it only accounts for a few percent of the total revenue.

[Simon]

How is the desktop marcket shrinking? I now own 1 PC and two laptops. That is 3 licenses of the same OS, 3 years ago i had 2 machines and 5 years ago I had 1. I still have only 1 mobile phone. And of course i could not work for my employer without a PC and now i have a work laptop so I am the user of 5 machines in total.

[techman-001]

I just don't think how Linux can beat Windows on desktop market in any reliably foreseeable future.

You said the word: market. Linux had to have a company, like Google or the sorts, to push the OS on the desktop.

The thing is that the barrier to entry the desktop market, i.e., the costs and obstacles that prevent new competitors from easily entering this business, is high.

Discussing why Linux is not the king of the desktop on technical terms is useless. Even if we had the fastest, most stable, most functional desktop OS today, we couldn't beat the clunky Windows, without pouring tons of money in the enterprise.

Not really, the world just needs to settle on one version so that all software makers know what to write their software for.

Yes ... really.

You're being very simplistic Simon. There is no "world" Linux governing body, there is no Linux company. Linux is just a *kernel* and all the Linux distros use that same kernel.

The Linux Desktop is just one of many Linux applications and it's just not important to the companies already making $billions of dollars every year from Linux.

There is a relatively new player in the Linux Desktop area. It comes with a consistent GUI and is very popular in education and with people at home. It can run standard Debian GUI applications on this same consistent GUI.

It's called Google ChromeOS and is on every Chromebook.

[Simon]

Yes, the free an open nature of it is what has prevented world dominance. i am aware that there is no worldwide body or company. that is what I am saying and that is the problem. Who wants to write commercial software on it.

Chrome OS? so this is available for me to install on my desktop and people are writing software for it? NO! it's just another distro aimed at a specific market. As it is being sold on machines it may be prevelant but only if all you want to do is browse the web with chrome and use Gmail?

[techman-001]

How is the desktop marcket shrinking? I now own 1 PC and two laptops. That is 3 licenses of the same OS, 3 years ago i had 2 machines and 5 years ago I had 1. I still have only 1 mobile phone. And of course i could not work for my employer without a PC and now i have a work laptop so I am the user of 5 machines in total.

It's not about YOU Simon

PC Market Shrinks For the Seventh Consecutive Year
by Felix Richter, Jul 12, 2018

Global PC shipments dropped to their lowest level since 2006 last year. According to estimates from market research firm Gartner, PC vendors shipped a total of 259 million computers in 2018, down from 263 million the year before. 2018 marked the seventh consecutive year of declining sales for the PC industry, and shipments are down almost 30 percent compared to 2011, the apparent peak of the PC era.

https://www.statista.com/chart/12578/global-pc-shipments/

[Simon]

OK, so why is that? are we infering that people are no longer using PC's? Has anyone heard of these things called laptops that run the exact same OS's? What are you driving at? Also the speed of innovation has dropped. When i bought my first PC I upped the specs of the RAM before it was even delivered. Things changed so fast and every few months I carried out an upgrade. My current PC has the same amount of RAM as my old PC that was 3 years old and i only replaced it because it broke and simply replicated it's spec with newer hardware. We don't need PC's to be constantly upgraded and changed every year anymore.... So you bet the market has shrunk. I damn well hope it has. But I am sure that there is an expanding userbase that are pissed off with M$ and would welcome another OS. I am one of them. Despite paying £100 to upgrade my M$ licence from home to pro I would ditch it in a heartbeat for a version of something else that works and does not tell me what programs i can and can't have!

[taydin]

Here are a few reasons why it would be VERY HARD for Microsoft to make the Linux kernel proprietary ...

1) You need to get ALL copyright holders to the kernel source to sign over their copyright. There are thousands! You need to track all of them down, offer them some money and get them to sign the copyright assignment. Even if you can find all of them, this would take years. Also, some copyright holders will be companies, and knowing the buyer is MS, they would want good money. So MS wouldn't be able to buy out all copyrighted material and would have to remove stuff that it wasn't able to buy.

2) Let's say MS managed to get copyright assignments. That would only mean that all NEW software development done on the Linux kernel will now be (c) Microsoft and not free. But all software that was there before the copyright assignment is still GNU GPLv2. So in this scenario, the Linux kernel would be forked, and we would have free Linux and MS Linux. Free Linux would continue to thrive, whereas MS Linux would stagnate at some point. Think about the OpenOffice/LibreOffice scenario.

So, MS probably isn't considering this move in order to buy out and kill Linux. The have probably realized that Linux is technically superior to their own kernel and want to capitalize on it  Even if they use Linux as the kernel, they will still have tons of software that is proprietary, so it wouldn't really hurt their bottom line. But their kernel would probably not move at a pace that free Linux would move. They would keep it at some version/configuration and only change if absolutely necessary.

[Simon]

they are probably just going to copy apple that ditched their OS and switched to their own version of Linux on a x86 hardware.

[techman-001]

Yes, the free an open nature of it is what has prevented world dominance. i am aware that there is no worldwide body or company. that is what I am saying and that is the problem. Who wants to write commercial software on it.

Chrome OS? so this is available for me to install on my desktop and people are writing software for it? NO! it's just another distro aimed at a specific market. As it is being sold on machines it may be prevelant but only if all you want to do is browse the web with chrome and use Gmail?

"Yes, the free an open nature of it is what has prevented world dominance."
   No. The predatory nature of Microsoft did that.

"Chrome OS? so this is available for me to install on my desktop and people are writing software for it? NO! it's just another distro aimed at a specific market."
  Wrong again: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os 

 Plenty of apps : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions

 Google Chrome is available on literally dozens of different notebook and laptop sized devices by many manufacturers ranging from a few hundred dollars to $1500+
They all have integrated Google Cloud storage, track pads, touch screens and great battery life.

And best off all Simon, they are available off the shelf with everything preinstalled, just like Windows.

[taydin]

they are probably just going to copy apple that ditched their OS and switched to their own version of Linux on a x86 hardware.

The Apple kernel is based on BSD kernel, which has a license that allows you to just take the code, and make it proprietary. With Linux you can't do this, you have to keep the source code available, including all modifications you made.

[Simon]

So i can run Kicad on chromium?

[Simon]

"Yes, the free an open nature of it is what has prevented world dominance."
   No. The predatory nature of Microsoft did that.

Really? So it's microsofts fault that software companies WILL support MAC but will NOT touch linux? what did MAC which is an equally minor player do to get special treatment?

[Simon]

From chromium.org:

So what can i actually do with it? oh yea, only what google lets me!!!

[Simon]

Also:

Where can I download Chromium OS?
If you are the kind of developer who likes to build an open source operating system from scratch, you can follow the developer instructions to check out Chromium OS, build it and experiment with it. A number of sites have also posted pre-built binaries of Chromium OS. However, these downloads are not verified by Google, therefore please ensure you trust the site you are downloading these from.
Keep in mind that Chromium OS is not for general consumer use.

Not so ubiquotus after all and I doubt google care about anyone elses applications but their own.

[nctnico]

How is the desktop marcket shrinking? I now own 1 PC and two laptops. That is 3 licenses of the same OS, 3 years ago i had 2 machines and 5 years ago I had 1. I still have only 1 mobile phone. And of course i could not work for my employer without a PC and now i have a work laptop so I am the user of 5 machines in total.

Maybe your desktop market is booming but if you'd looked up the statistics then you'd see world wide the number of desktop PCs is steadily declining.

[nctnico]

Yes, the free an open nature of it is what has prevented world dominance. i am aware that there is no worldwide body or company. that is what I am saying and that is the problem. Who wants to write commercial software on it.

That isn't true at all. The Linux ecosystem is based on Unix and therefore is compliant with POSIX ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX ). The GUI system is based on X-windows and the underlying APIs (which will move to the newer Weston / Wayland in the next couple of years). And then there are OpenGL and Vulkan for 3D graphics. If there is any group of OSses for which it is easy to write interchangeable software for then it is Unix. Unlike Windows, Unix operating systems (and thus Linux) are based on actual industry standards.

[Mr. Scram]

Really? So it's microsofts fault that software companies WILL support MAC but will NOT touch linux? what did MAC which is an equally minor player do to get special treatment?

This thread is both hilarious and worrisome at the same time. The mental gymnastics some people go through to make the outside world fit their internal beliefs are incredible. When facts don't align they're no reason to re-examine what may be a more nuanced matter than thought but instead are labelled either propaganda or a ploy of "the enemy". Though relatively benign here, this is how extremism works.

[Simon]

Yes, the free an open nature of it is what has prevented world dominance. i am aware that there is no worldwide body or company. that is what I am saying and that is the problem. Who wants to write commercial software on it.

That isn't true at all. The Linux ecosystem is based on Unix and therefore is compliant with POSIX ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX ). The GUI system is based on X-windows and the underlying APIs (which will move to the newer Weston / Wayland in the next couple of years). And then there are OpenGL and Vulkan for 3D graphics. If there is any group of OSses for which it is easy to write interchangeable software for then it is Unix. Unlike Windows, Unix operating systems (and thus Linux) are based on actual industry standards.

Yes but industry standards does not mean user standards. If someone writes a program that works on a certain distribution can you expect them to support it or take complaints of it not working on another distribution? Lets take an example. Can i install KiCad on any distribution of linex. it is what I now use, so apparently itwill run with no issues on anything called "Linux"

As for the desktop market shrinking, the market may be shrinking but why does that mean use? I am sorry but the statistic is correct for what it says. SALES not users are shrinking. And as all our global economy cares about is growth this is a terrible thing. As i said before. what about laptops? tell me the sales figures for laptops. Let me guess, sales of laptops are up.

My employer uses 3D CAD softawre with a support contract. Even on windows we has issues. Can you say that they can develop the same software for linux and it work on any distro. Can you guarantee less calls to support if they let it loose on linux?

[Simon]

Really? So it's microsofts fault that software companies WILL support MAC but will NOT touch linux? what did MAC which is an equally minor player do to get special treatment?

This thread is both hilarious and worrisome at the same time. The mental gymnastics some people go through to make the outside world fit their internal beliefs are incredible. When facts don't align they're no reason to re-examine what may be a more nuanced matter than thought but instead are labelled either propaganda or a ploy of "the enemy". Though relatively benign here, this is how extremism works.

OK, so it is microsofts fault that it was more appealing to users than linux and under some sort of conspiracy theory we blame M$ for the marketing choices af another entity - Astounding but OK.....

[Nominal Animal]

If someone writes a program that works on a certain distribution can you expect them to support it or take complaints of it not working on another distribution?

If they are too inept to write the application to work on all (or almost all) Linux distributions, the problem is their own making.

I can do it, so it is definitely possible.

If they don't want to go to the expense of hiring competent developers, they can always do an AppImage per hardware architecture (possibly just AMD64).

The solution is not to impose The One Accepted Thing and exclude everything else. Just require a better product.  I keep harping about this, but it does not seem to sink in any. 

[Simon]

Well then the actual distro selection is not a problem. But people still need to choose to install linux and developers already have a market for windows software. I aim to move to linux but it's sort the sort of thing I wauld try nd get my dad to do. He got flumacst when he got a new laptop (yea another dent in those PC sales) with a password to get into windows....

[techman-001]

So i can run Kicad on chromium?

Why not ?
Just enable the Linux facility and install the Kicad Debian package.

[nctnico]

Yes, the free an open nature of it is what has prevented world dominance. i am aware that there is no worldwide body or company. that is what I am saying and that is the problem. Who wants to write commercial software on it.

That isn't true at all. The Linux ecosystem is based on Unix and therefore is compliant with POSIX ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX ). The GUI system is based on X-windows and the underlying APIs (which will move to the newer Weston / Wayland in the next couple of years). And then there are OpenGL and Vulkan for 3D graphics. If there is any group of OSses for which it is easy to write interchangeable software for then it is Unix. Unlike Windows, Unix operating systems (and thus Linux) are based on actual industry standards.

Yes but industry standards does not mean user standards. If someone writes a program that works on a certain distribution can you expect them to support it or take complaints of it not working on another distribution? Lets take an example. Can i install KiCad on any distribution of linex. it is what I now use, so apparently itwill run with no issues on anything called "Linux"

As long as the libraries have the right version for the Kicad binary this shouldn't be a problem.

My employer uses 3D CAD softawre with a support contract. Even on windows we has issues. Can you say that they can develop the same software for linux and it work on any distro. Can you guarantee less calls to support if they let it loose on linux?

It is not about less calls to support. What software developers want to do is make support cost as least as possible. For example: if I write PC software I only guarantee it will work on a professional (for business) Dell machine with an Intel CPU. The same goes for 'supporting' Linux distributions'; you want to limit the number of configurations you test software on and need to train support staff. This doesn't say the software won't run on a different Linux distribution or Windows version but you are on your own.

[Karel]

More facts:
Most industrial/professional EDA is available for Linux.
For example:

• Zuken CR-5000 & CR-7000
• Cadence Allegro
• Keysight ADS

The (mediocre) altium designer and Orcad are exceptions.
The same for MCU firmware and FPGA development, they are all available for Linux.

[Simon]

It is not about less calls to support. What software developers want to do is make support cost as least as possible. For example: if I write PC software I only guarantee it will work on a professional (for business) Dell machine with an Intel CPU. The same goes for 'supporting' Linux distributions'; you want to limit the number of configurations you test software on and need to train support staff. This doesn't say the software won't run on a different Linux distribution or Windows version but you are on your own.

Which is about less calls to support and development time.

[Simon]

More facts:
Most industrial/professional EDA is available for Linux.
For example:

• Zuken CR-5000 & CR-7000
• Cadence Allegro
• Keysight ADS

The (mediocre) altium designer and Orcad are exceptions.
The same for MCU firmware and FPGA development, they are all available for Linux.

But none of the main 3D CAD players. If developers saw linux as an aption customers would too.

[Simon]

So your saying it's the most expensive programs that also have a linux version? what have I been saying?

[nctnico]

More facts:
Most industrial/professional EDA is available for Linux.
For example:

• Zuken CR-5000 & CR-7000
• Cadence Allegro
• Keysight ADS

The (mediocre) altium designer and Orcad are exceptions.

Not quite.. Orcad PCB Editor is Allegro and it runs on Linux. I've seen some screenshots of what seems to be a new schematics package for Orcad and it wouldn't surprise me if that runs on Linux. Dunno whether it will be an improvement over the good old Orcad Capture but we'll see.

[nctnico]

So your saying it's the most expensive programs that also have a linux version? what have I been saying?

KiCad is free. GCC is free. Orcad is cheaper compared to Altium.

I think the major 3D software companies must be working on Linux versions by now. Otherwise they'll start missing the boat. One of my customers does all his 3D design using FreeCad.

[Mr. Scram]

Linux being well supported by the engineering world isn't a reality. Some applications are but many of the major applications aren't. If you can't run Solidworks on a natively supported OS few will bother. That will remain an issue even if some versions of Linux were to be supported as companies spend eye-watering amounts of money on certified hardware and drivers with the best support available to ensure as little downtime as possible. Those companies aren't going to run OSs without explicit software and driver support. The current situation is just not compatible with the obligatory ass covering any kind of serious engineering tends to come with. Obviously the same argument applies to Windows and Microsoft if it were to remove too much control introducing liabilities.

[Simon]

I'm not sure autodesk are planning one. Certainly not for fusion 360, i have seen that statement from them but they support MAC. Fusion 360 is where they do all of their development I am told. I just sat through a boring sales pitch at work about siemens solid edge and there was no mention about linux.

[Mr. Scram]

KiCad is free. GCC is free. Orcad is cheaper compared to Altium.

I think the major 3D software companies must be working on Linux versions by now. Otherwise they'll start missing the boat. One of my customers does all his 3D design using FreeCad.

Miss what boat? The mythical SS "Year of Linux"? No matter how much some people wish it to be true it's not close to happening as of yet. Companies will follow the money and that's still in the Windows and Mac side of things.

[Karel]

The free and paid versions of FPGA development software from Xilinx and Intel (former Altera) run on Linux as well.

[rstofer]

Yes, the free an open nature of it is what has prevented world dominance. i am aware that there is no worldwide body or company. that is what I am saying and that is the problem. Who wants to write commercial software on it.

Are you thinking here about the costs of keeping up with the incessant changes in the OS?  That has always annoyed me with Nvidia and Linux.  Every time the kernel changed, I had to rebuild the graphic drivers.  AFAIK that is still the case.  Nvidia won't go open source and Linux keeps changing.

I would think that developers have to include a cost for keeping up with changes and there is no governing body for anything except the kernel and that is strictly Linus' baby.

The reason I hate Ubuntu:  The arrogant developers decided that the system buttons should be on the wrong side.   In earlier incantations, you could change the location by modifying some file in your user directory (I have forgotten how) but latter on their arrogance reached entirely new heights; you can't move the buttons back where they belong no matter what you do.  Two or three guys get to decide that everybody else in the world is wrong and the buttons belong on the top left.

The open source community is not a place to design into.  In many ways, it is like nailing Jello to a wall.  No matter what you do, it won't stay in place.

Yes, Linux is designed into IoT, cell phones, some tablets; places where price of the OS is a significant consideration. In fact, the driving force is probably the need for customization. As I said before, Linux is a bit player in the desktop (or laptop) market.  Even when free, they can't give it away.  The PC manufacturers really want to use a stable platform, something with backward compatibility and, most important, something that isn't changing out from under them.  Linux will likely never be more than a 2% bit player in the desktop market.

But it is very useful for command line development work.

[bsfeechannel]

Yes, Linux is designed into IoT, cell phones, some tablets; places where price of the OS is a significant consideration. In fact, the driving force is probably the need for customization. As I said before, Linux is a bit player in the desktop (or laptop) market.  Even when free, they can't give it away.  The PC manufacturers really want to use a stable platform, something with backward compatibility and, most important, something that isn't changing out from under them.  Linux will likely never be more than a 2% bit player in the desktop market.

All those "harmful" changes do not seem to affect Android. So the argument does not compute. Something else is missing to explain the 2%.

PC Market Shrinks For the Seventh Consecutive Year
by Felix Richter, Jul 12, 2018

Global PC shipments dropped to their lowest level since 2006 last year. According to estimates from market research firm Gartner, PC vendors shipped a total of 259 million computers in 2018, down from 263 million the year before. 2018 marked the seventh consecutive year of declining sales for the PC industry, and shipments are down almost 30 percent compared to 2011, the apparent peak of the PC era.

https://www.statista.com/chart/12578/global-pc-shipments/

Yes. We need to stop thinking like nerds and think like strategists.

What is the company behind Linux? It is literally the world. From top hackers like Linus, whose salary is worth their weight in gold, to script kiddies doing it just for fun. Microsoft can't beat that. The world >> Microsoft.

Is Linux ready for the desktop? Of course. Has always been. Linus wrote Linux as his desktop and that's what he's been using ever since. Others, including me, jumped on the bandwagon long ago and never looked back.

But Microsoft dominates the desktop market and is sitting on top of more than 100 Billion $ cash. Such a costly war serves no purpose. Besides, the desktop marketing is shrinking.

The only way to make significant inroads in this market is to come up with some disruptive solution that Microsoft can't control.

So it's already clear why Linux has only 2% on the desktop when it is proved that Linux is perfectly capable to replace Windows.

Now we need to figure out what Microsoft is up to with their approach to Linux. Embrace, Extend and Extinguish is a possibility. It has been their default strategy with profound damage to users. Their intention with Windows NT was to extinguish Unix. But Linux ended up as the most successful Unix heir.

[bd139]

Nope. It's actually mostly Redhat behind Linux. They own most of the core developers and ancillary developers now and have been buying out people for years. They are the first "billion dollar open source company". Also everyone handjobs everyone else in the corporate IT sector: https://www.redhat.com/en/partners/microsoft and of course https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/ ... even Tencent the nearest thing to Tyrell Corporation or Weyland-Yutani is in there...

Remember that open source "free of corporate interests" thing? LMAO. Nope. Everyone is just where they are wanted and everything is decided behind closed doors. You're not going to change a thing. Everything on github or open source these days is people trying to get IPO to buy a Lambo. I know I would if I could be arsed.

Give me a crate of TTL ICs and some FORTH books and I'll crawl off into the wilderness where all the ideologies haven't been bought up.

[nctnico]

Linux being well supported by the engineering world isn't a reality. Some applications are but many of the major applications aren't. If you can't run Solidworks on a natively supported OS few will bother. That will remain an issue even if some versions of Linux were to be supported as companies spend eye-watering amounts of money on certified hardware and drivers with the best support available to ensure as little downtime as possible. Those companies aren't going to run OSs without explicit software and driver support.

I guess you have never heard of Redhat. They do just that.

[Mr. Scram]

Phones have much shorter life cycles and are actively developed for in their short life cycle. When the manufacturer drops support security holes remain and custom ROMs become a lot less likely and people tend to simply upgrade out of that situation. It's actually remarkably similar to the desktop situation except that it's a different market. I don't know why a surprising amount of people are so adamant the disappointing market adoption of Linux on desktop is some evil plot instead of looking at the product. The professional world obviously has different expectations of a product and in phones the manufacturers blunt the sharp edges for the consumer. When consumers are responsible themselves it's a whole different story. Until the adepts of Linux snap out of their dream and both acknowledge and address this issue the year of Linux will never come and it'll all remain idealist and fundamentalist blabber with the real world giving them wide berth. The fragmentation of Linux is both a blessing and a curse but is definitely a hurdle when it comes to desktop adoption. As long as people keep bickering and forking over details instead of getting real and taking a long hard look at the actual product nothing will ever change.

[bd139]

Yep. Problem with the desktop is it's shitty, difficult to program for, clunky and unreliable. And not only that the guardian of the realm is comic book guy from the simpsons on the average day.

[Simon]

Yes. We need to stop thinking like nerds and think like strategists.

Oh god, what have i been saying for pages? This not about Linuxes capability but the way it is offered and managed - or not.

Is Linux ready for the desktop? Of course. Has always been. Linus wrote Linux as his desktop and that's what he's been using ever since. Others, including me, jumped on the bandwagon long ago and never looked back.


But Microsoft dominates the desktop market and is sitting on top of more than 100 Billion $ cash. Such a costly war serves no purpose. Besides, the desktop marketing is shrinking.

also been saying this for pages. But he let everyone do with it as they please so now the average non technical user has 100+ distro's to choose from and will just wlk away from such a choice.

No the desktop userbase is not shrinking! sales of PC computers are. Come and tell me it's shrinking when M$ have told you that they have less licences activated than before. People build their own and now "a computer" is a laptop NOT a desktop PC.

The only way to make significant inroads in this market is to come up with some disruptive solution that Microsoft can't control.

So it's already clear why Linux has only 2% on the desktop when it is proved that Linux is perfectly capable to replace Windows.

Disruptive? god I hate that word, it's what people use to describe ideas they have that have 0 value or practicality.

[nctnico]

More facts:
Most industrial/professional EDA is available for Linux.
For example:

• Zuken CR-5000 & CR-7000
• Cadence Allegro
• Keysight ADS

The (mediocre) altium designer and Orcad are exceptions.

Not quite.. Orcad PCB Editor is Allegro and it runs on Linux. I've seen some screenshots of what seems to be a new schematics package for Orcad and it wouldn't surprise me if that runs on Linux. Dunno whether it will be an improvement over the good old Orcad Capture but we'll see.

Orcad PCB doesn't run on Linux. Orcad schematic capture runs on Linux, but you have to use the much more expensive Allegro if you stick with Linux. The new, stripped down version, rebranded as Orcad PCB, runs only on Windows.

Well Cadence naming for their products isn't very clear but what I'm currently running on Linux is called Orcad PCB Editor / Orcad PCB Designer which is Allegro. I don't know what package they sell for $430. The current schematic capture package (up to version 17.2) definitely doesn't run on Linux natively.

[Simon]

Yep. Problem with the desktop is it's shitty, difficult to program for, clunky and unreliable. And not only that the guardian of the realm is comic book guy from the simpsons on the average day.

So a laptop is different to program from a PC? I have 2 laptops but use my PC out of choice. It cost only 25% more than my most powerful laptop but has much more computing power and speed. my 8+8 Ryzen cores more than trump my 2+2 i7 not to mention faster RAM and dedicated graphics. Try and tell a 3D CAD person to use a laptop and they will look at you like: "what the"

[Mr. Scram]

I guess you have never heard of Redhat. They do just that.

I've heard of it as have many other people. The problem is that most have heard of it instead of using it on their desktops.

[bd139]

Yep. Problem with the desktop is it's shitty, difficult to program for, clunky and unreliable. And not only that the guardian of the realm is comic book guy from the simpsons on the average day.

So a laptop is different to program from a PC? I have 2 laptops but use my PC out of choice. It cost only 25% more than my most powerful laptop but has much more computing power and speed. my 8+8 Ryzen cores more than trump my 2+2 i7 not to mention faster RAM and dedicated graphics. Try and tell a 3D CAD person to use a laptop and they will look at you like: "what the"

Sorry the "linux desktop experience" not the hardware. I'd rather use a "desktop form factor" PC myself but I don't have the room for one and I do a lot of work in random places and on the road. As most of my power is heavy compute, I use my laptop as a terminal and fire up a beast of a machine in AWS as required.

I prefer desktop PCs because it means no pissing around with batteries and power management and they tend to last a lot longer.

[Simon]

So if the desktop PC/laptop is hard to program for what are people supposed to use for "serious" work. As you say your laptop is not even good enough.

[nctnico]

I guess you have never heard of Redhat. They do just that.

I've heard of it as have many other people. The problem is that most have heard of it instead of using it on their desktops.

And? It disproves your claim that you can't get enterprise level support for Linux. Besides that companies are free to provide such support along with their software products.

[Mr. Scram]

So if the desktop PC/laptop is hard to program for what are people supposed to use for "serious" work. As you say your laptop is not even good enough.

He's talking about Linux specifically. I thought that was clear.

[Simon]

So if the desktop PC/laptop is hard to program for what are people supposed to use for "serious" work. As you say your laptop is not even good enough.

He's talking about Linux specifically. I thought that was clear.

Sorry are we saying linux is hard to program on desktop environments or that desktop environments in general are hard to program for?

[Mr. Scram]

And? It disproves your claim that you can't get enterprise level support for Linux. Besides that companies are free to provide such support along with their software products.

Be careful not to misinterpret what people say. There is no Linux enterprise level support for applications like Solidworks and the hardware and drivers it needs so a lot of companies won't even consider it. With a marginal market share Dassault isn't going to develop for it either which is where the fragmentation starts hurting. They understandably have no interest in supporting the full software and hardware stack on their own to sell to a miniscule market. They're not in it for idealistic reasons.

[Mr. Scram]

Sorry are we saying linux is hard to program on desktop environments or that desktop environments in general are hard to program for?

I quote "linux desktop experience".

[Simon]

And? It disproves your claim that you can't get enterprise level support for Linux. Besides that companies are free to provide such support along with their software products.

Be careful not to misinterpret what people say. There is no Linux enterprise level support for applications like Solidworks and the hardware and drivers it needs so a lot of companies won't even consider it. With a marginal market share Dassault isn't going to develop for it either which is where the fragmentation starts hurting. They understandably have no interest in supporting the full software and hardware stack on their own to sell to a miniscule market.

Funny, that's what i said but apparently any linux program will work on any linux and be just as easy as a windows program.

[bsfeechannel]

Nope. It's actually mostly Redhat behind Linux.

Nope. It's the whole world. Including Microsoft.

I don't know why a surprising amount of people are so adamant the disappointing market adoption of Linux on desktop is some evil plot instead of looking at the product.

There's no evil plot. Just marketing forces at play.

But he let everyone do with it as they please so now the average non technical user has 100+ distro's to choose from and will just wlk away from such a choice.

If Linux came bundled with the hardware like Windows, MacOS or Android do, what choice of distro you'd be talking about? What Android distro do I have to chose?

Why vendors don't want to bundle Linux on the desktop? Because of all those options? Give me a break. They don't care about that. It's precisely their job to eliminate all those options.

Look at Android. Google standardize Linux and offer that to vendors. Vendors take care of all the incompatibilities with their hardware and offer the user a polished product.

You want an app on your Android phone or tablet? Just download it from Google store. Another way to narrow down incompatibilities between apps and the OS.

Disruptive? god I hate that word, it's what people use to describe ideas they have that have 0 value or practicality.

Hate not. Disruptive here means original. But I used that word exactly to show that Linux is not going to happen on the desktop. Not because of the reasons people are pointing out. If that were the case, Android would never have happened. If that were the case, MacOS would have killed Windows long ago.

[Mr. Scram]

Funny, that's what i said but apparently any linux program will work on any linux and be just as easy as a windows program.

Even when it would work on every single distro the market share would be too small. As discussed before it's also a matter of full on support rather than merely working. These companies want their asses properly covered and that means top to bottom hardware and software support.

[bd139]

So if the desktop PC/laptop is hard to program for what are people supposed to use for "serious" work. As you say your laptop is not even good enough.

He's talking about Linux specifically. I thought that was clear.

Sorry are we saying linux is hard to program on desktop environments or that desktop environments in general are hard to program for?

I am saying that Linux desktop environments are hard to program for. It's difficult to produce anything consistent, functional, polished with accessibility concerns covered etc. This is why things like Electron are rather popular now as that gives you all that and portability and less of an ass ache: https://electronjs.org/

Nope. It's actually mostly Redhat behind Linux.

Nope. It's the whole world. Including Microsoft.

I disagree. That's the illusion redhat want people to see but they basically waltzed in and standardised a lot of stuff according to their viewpoint and now run an operating of employing and coercing people to build to those standards. They are 100% right that we need a single Linux though for market purposes.

Microsoft defines pretty much nothing. The only thing they comtribute is Hyper-V drivers, SCVMM tools and toolchain they want you to use and hope you will pay for Azure. The core is off limits. Because redhat own it.

[nctnico]

And? It disproves your claim that you can't get enterprise level support for Linux. Besides that companies are free to provide such support along with their software products.

Be careful not to misinterpret what people say. There is no Linux enterprise level support for applications like Solidworks and the hardware and drivers it needs so a lot of companies won't even consider it. With a marginal market share Dassault isn't going to develop for it either which is where the fragmentation starts hurting. They understandably have no interest in supporting the full software and hardware stack on their own to sell to a miniscule market. They're not in it for idealistic reasons.

Now you are moving goal posts again. Why would Dassault not be able to do what others are doing (Cadence, Xilinx, Altera, Eclipse, etc, etc)?. After all as any Unix the APIs / libraries used by Linux software are based on well established industry standards. I guess what you are after is the ability to have trained support engineers who can help customers to get going. If they don't want to do that they can simply specify the customer needs to use Redhat enterprise Linux and get support from there. For other Linux distros customers are on their own. It is similar when companies saying their Windows program can only run on Windows 7. It will likely run on Windows XP and Windows 10 (with or without some extra effort) but no guarantees. The same goes for certain hardware configurations but Windows and Linux are no different in that respect. IOW: please stop the superficial FUD.


The primary reason companies like Dassault have not yet released Linux versions is higly probable due to the fact they never looked beyond Windows and therefore never developed their software to be cross-platform. Given the fact other major CAD companies do release Linux versions of their software is a clear indication it is worth the effort of having & supporting Linux as an OS. Googling 'Solidworks Linux' gives over 7 million hits so it is not like there is no demand to run Solidworks on Linux.

[bsfeechannel]

I disagree. That's the illusion redhat want people to see but they basically waltzed in and standardised a lot of stuff according to their viewpoint and now run an operating of employing and coercing people to build to those standards. They are 100% right that we need a single Linux though for market purposes.

Let's get down to the numbers.



So, Red Hat is one of the most prolific contributors to the kernel, but Linux is very, very far from being "mostly Red Hat". To begin with, Intel is the number one with 13.1%. You can see companies from all over the world. It is interesting to notice the amount of people not tied to companies. If we consider none, unknown and consultants, we have 15,6%, even more than Intel.

So, Linux is simply awesome. It managed to gather together who is who in the world of technology.

[Mr. Scram]

Now you are moving goal posts again. Why would Dassault not be able to do what others are doing (Cadence, Xilinx, Altera, Eclipse, etc, etc)?. After all as any Unix the APIs / libraries used by Linux software are based on well established industry standards. I guess what you are after is the ability to have trained support engineers who can help customers to get going. If they don't want to do that they can simply specify the customer needs to use Redhat enterprise Linux and get support from there. For other Linux distros customers are on their own. It is similar when companies saying their Windows program can only run on Windows 7. It will likely run on Windows XP and Windows 10 (with or without some extra effort) but no guarantees. The same goes for certain hardware configurations but Windows and Linux are no different in that respect. IOW: please stop the superficial FUD.


The primary reason companies like Dassault have not yet released Linux versions is higly probably due to the fact they never looked beyond Windows and therefore never developed their software to be cross-platform. Given the fact other major CAD companies do release Linux versions of their software is a clear indication it is worth the effort of having & supporting Linux as an OS. Googling 'Solidworks Linux' gives over 7 million hits so it is not like there is no demand to run Solidworks on Linux.

What goalposts? It's not anywhere near happening for obvious reasons and it won't be for the foreseeable future. It has nothing to do with looking beyond Windows or any such thing and is simply a sane business decision not to support a miniscule market. Anyone calling that FUD is likely part of the problem. It's not Windows and it's not Dassault. It's the already tiny Linux desktop market share hopelessly fragmented.

That many of these fragments are Comic Book Guy empires doesn't help either. I'd love to see a meaningful change and major third party player support but the whole premise of Linux for many contributors is that it's customisable to their personal wishes and desires. Having a central killer distro around which third party developers can rally goes against this so it doesn't appear that this is likely to happen. People would rather work on their own pet projects than to focus their efforts and projects inevitably seem to fork into smaller ones as they reach a certain size. The many different distros and quality of some of them are amazing if you consider their nature but it seems the very model and premise of it all needs to change for a push into the desktop market.

[Bud]

Nope. It's actually mostly Redhat behind Linux.

Nope. It's the whole world. Including Microsoft.

Microsoft has a support phone number. Can you provide a support phone number of your "world" 

[olkipukki]

The primary reason companies like Dassault have not yet released Linux versions is higly probable due to the fact they never looked beyond Windows and therefore never developed their software to be cross-platform.

I would say, they cannot figure out what does that's means 'Linux'   

Given the fact other major CAD companies do release Linux versions of their software is a clear indication it is worth the effort of having & supporting Linux as an OS. Googling 'Solidworks Linux' gives over 7 million hits so it is not like there is no demand to run Solidworks on Linux.

What distro you will use in a small shop? What about SME and an enterprise?

Not sure about 'major CAD' releases, but :
 - Siemens NX supports Red Hat / SUSE commercials only
 - BricsCAD supports Ubuntu only

[Karel]

More facts:

Companies that rely on Linux and want payed support contracts, go either to Redhat, Suse or Ubuntu.

Most industrial grade software that runs on Linux is certified for at least one of these.

[FreddieChopin]

Nope. It's actually mostly Redhat behind Linux.

Nope. It's the whole world. Including Microsoft.

Microsoft has a support phone number. Can you provide a support phone number of your "world" 

https://lmgtfy.com/?q=ubuntu+phone+number

literary first result +44 20 7630 2400

[bd139]

Microsoft support is terrible. I mean really the worst. Random advice on the internet is much better. Even their partner support is terrible when you pay the £185 incident cost.

The best way to get support from MS is shitposting on Hacker News after Scott G replies to something.

[Karel]

Small shops that don't want a payed support contract but need compatibility can use the following free alternatives:

Redhat:   CentOS
Suse:      Opensuse Leap
Ubuntu:  Ubuntu LTS

[techman-001]

Microsoft support is terrible. I mean really the worst. Random advice on the internet is much better. Even their partner support is terrible when you pay the £185 incident cost.

The best way to get support from MS is shitposting on Hacker News after Scott G replies to something.

http://www.dba-oracle.com/oracle_news/2005_9_19_microsoft_psychic.htm

    This article compares two support numbers: Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network. As a result of this research, we have come to the following conclusions:

        1 ) that Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network are about equal in their ability to provide technical assistance for Microsoft products over the phone ;

        2 ) that the Psychic Friends Net work has a distinct edge over Microsoft in the areas of courtesy, response time, and cost of support; but

        3) that Microsoft has a generally better refund policy if they fail to solve your problem.

    In terms of technical expertise, we found that a Microsoft technician using Knowledge Base was about as helpful as a Psychic Friends reader using Tarot Cards. All in all, however, the Psychic Friends Net work proved to be a much friendlier organization than Microsoft Technical Support.

[techman-001]

So i can run Kicad on chromium?

Absolutely, but it's actually "ChromeOS" because "Chromium" is a Open Source version of the proprietary Google Chrome Web Browser.

I asked a ChromeBook owner to install Kicad and she said it installed and works no problem on her machine, which is a Asus Chromebook C523:

Asus Chromebook C523, $289 USD: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KY8QV1D?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_dt_b_product_details

Backed by the might of Google, the quality of Asus and the Open Source engineering of Linux, a ChromeBook gives you 100GB of FREE cloud Google Drive, no more lost data, access from any machine etc, etc.

It's simple to use and dead easy to enable Linux support to run native Linux apps under ChromeOS.

What's not to love ?

** Linux, powering yet another world winning technology near you. **

[bd139]

Microsoft support is terrible. I mean really the worst. Random advice on the internet is much better. Even their partner support is terrible when you pay the £185 incident cost.

The best way to get support from MS is shitposting on Hacker News after Scott G replies to something.

http://www.dba-oracle.com/oracle_news/2005_9_19_microsoft_psychic.htm

    This article compares two support numbers: Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network. As a result of this research, we have come to the following conclusions:

        1 ) that Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network are about equal in their ability to provide technical assistance for Microsoft products over the phone ;

        2 ) that the Psychic Friends Net work has a distinct edge over Microsoft in the areas of courtesy, response time, and cost of support; but

        3) that Microsoft has a generally better refund policy if they fail to solve your problem.

    In terms of technical expertise, we found that a Microsoft technician using Knowledge Base was about as helpful as a Psychic Friends reader using Tarot Cards. All in all, however, the Psychic Friends Net work proved to be a much friendlier organization than Microsoft Technical Support.

Hahaha perfect.

[Simon]

Microsoft support is terrible. I mean really the worst. Random advice on the internet is much better. Even their partner support is terrible when you pay the £185 incident cost.

The best way to get support from MS is shitposting on Hacker News after Scott G replies to something.

True. I have had to contact them several times and rarely have they been instrumental in solving the problem.

[Simon]

Now you are moving goal posts again. Why would Dassault not be able to do what others are doing (Cadence, Xilinx, Altera, Eclipse, etc, etc)?. After all as any Unix the APIs / libraries used by Linux software are based on well established industry standards. I guess what you are after is the ability to have trained support engineers who can help customers to get going. If they don't want to do that they can simply specify the customer needs to use Redhat enterprise Linux and get support from there. For other Linux distros customers are on their own. It is similar when companies saying their Windows program can only run on Windows 7. It will likely run on Windows XP and Windows 10 (with or without some extra effort) but no guarantees. The same goes for certain hardware configurations but Windows and Linux are no different in that respect. IOW: please stop the superficial FUD.

again I have been saying this since the start but was treated like a moron! Tell my employer that they are going to have 9 CAD engineers working on an OS that the 3D CAD system was not guaranteed to work on. As it is the support on windows is shit! the solution is usually: 1) No one else uses our software to do that legitimate thing so why are you. 2) We don't know, don't care, 3) This is a feature request not a bug, 4) We are going to ignore you. 4) is what i got when I pointed out that the idiots had not been consistent in which parameter to embed in the drawing as the background colour. I used a windows colour scheme setting to make backgrounds off white. but when another user openend the drawing instead of seeing it with the colour set in their windows options they got mine. The manufacturer - Siemens Solid edge was not interested in fixing it.

What suppor do you think a company like that will give a linux hosted program. In thheory they may support but in practice it would be none which is anly slightly less than what they offer on windows.

[Mr. Scram]

More facts:

Companies that rely on Linux and want payed support contracts, go either to Redhat, Suse or Ubuntu.

Most industrial grade software that runs on Linux is certified for at least one of these.

Can you quantity "most" and list them and what user base they represent?

[Simon]

3 solutions is already problematic. What happens when you want 3 different programs and they each use one of the distros. So how does a customer manage?

[nctnico]

Now you are moving goal posts again. Why would Dassault not be able to do what others are doing (Cadence, Xilinx, Altera, Eclipse, etc, etc)?. After all as any Unix the APIs / libraries used by Linux software are based on well established industry standards. I guess what you are after is the ability to have trained support engineers who can help customers to get going. If they don't want to do that they can simply specify the customer needs to use Redhat enterprise Linux and get support from there. For other Linux distros customers are on their own. It is similar when companies saying their Windows program can only run on Windows 7. It will likely run on Windows XP and Windows 10 (with or without some extra effort) but no guarantees. The same goes for certain hardware configurations but Windows and Linux are no different in that respect. IOW: please stop the superficial FUD.

again I have been saying this since the start but was treated like a moron! Tell my employer that they are going to have 9 CAD engineers working on an OS that the 3D CAD system was not guaranteed to work on.

That is simple: use the Linux distribution that the software is guaranteed to work on. Your question is the same situation when running a Windows 7 program on XP while Windows XP is not supported by the software manufacturer. Don't let the FUD from Mr Scram fool you. He is completely ignoring the fact you can get fully supported Linux distribitions (most used / known is Redhat).

Look at this platform compatibility list from Cadence: https://www.cadence.com/content/dam/cadence-www/global/en_US/documents/support/supported-platforms-matrix.pdf for an example which shows which platform a major CAD vendor supports.

[Mr. Scram]

That is simple: use the Linux distribution that the software is guaranteed to work on. Your question is the same situation when running a Windows 7 program on XP while Windows XP is not supported by the software manufacturer. Don't let the FUD from Mr Scram fool you. He is completely ignoring the fact you can get fully supported Linux distribitions (most used / known is Redhat).

Look at this platform compatibility list from Cadence: https://www.cadence.com/content/dam/cadence-www/global/en_US/documents/support/supported-platforms-matrix.pdf for an example which shows which platform a major CAD vendor supports.

I just remarked major applications like Solidworks aren't supported at a level companies that use it demand. How is that FUD? This "if it's not my friend it is my enemy" attitude will get us nowhere though unfortunately it's all too prevalent. Most don't give a shit about your OS holy war. They have a job to do.

[nctnico]

That is simple: use the Linux distribution that the software is guaranteed to work on. Your question is the same situation when running a Windows 7 program on XP while Windows XP is not supported by the software manufacturer. Don't let the FUD from Mr Scram fool you. He is completely ignoring the fact you can get fully supported Linux distribitions (most used / known is Redhat).

Look at this platform compatibility list from Cadence: https://www.cadence.com/content/dam/cadence-www/global/en_US/documents/support/supported-platforms-matrix.pdf for an example which shows which platform a major CAD vendor supports.

I just remarked major applications like Solidworks aren't supported at a level companies that use it demand. How is that FUD?

I suggest to look at a price list of Cadence and the type of companies that use that software. Then look and see that the only platform Cadence supports for all products is RHEL (=Redhat Enterprise Linux). Now try to convince me that companies spending 6 digit figures on software won't demand a certain level of support but users of Solidworks (which costs a fraction in comparison) do? IOW: you are plain wrong in stating that you can't get a properly supported Linux environment to work on. There is more than Windows out there and you have to ask yourself why Cadence relies on Linux instead of porting their applications to Windows.

[Simon]

again I have been saying this since the start but was treated like a moron! Tell my employer that they are going to have 9 CAD engineers working on an OS that the 3D CAD system was not guaranteed to work on.

That is simple: use the Linux distribution that the software is guaranteed to work on. Your question is the same situation when running a Windows 7 program on XP while Windows XP is not supported by the software manufacturer. Don't let the FUD from Mr Scram fool you. He is completely ignoring the fact you can get fully supported Linux distribitions (most used / known is Redhat).

this is nothing to do with what Mr Scram said. something that works on windows 7 is almost guaranteed to work on windows 10 if it was written for 7 and not XP (windows 5!) They are evolutions of the same OS other than when windows jumped from XP to Vista where they just used windows server as they had nothing left that worked. But asking for support on a completetly different version to that supported is a problem when it's not even the same OS other than being based on the same kernel.

Companies that use several flagship programs will be caught with which distro to use as different flagship programs essential to their operation are only guaranteed to work on different distros. That is why windows wins! at work we had 7 and then moved to 10 when told to for support. We did not need to run 2 different versions of windows for different programs.

[nctnico]

again I have been saying this since the start but was treated like a moron! Tell my employer that they are going to have 9 CAD engineers working on an OS that the 3D CAD system was not guaranteed to work on.

That is simple: use the Linux distribution that the software is guaranteed to work on. Your question is the same situation when running a Windows 7 program on XP while Windows XP is not supported by the software manufacturer. Don't let the FUD from Mr Scram fool you. He is completely ignoring the fact you can get fully supported Linux distribitions (most used / known is Redhat).

this is nothing to do with what Mr Scram said. something that works on windows 7 is almost guaranteed to work on windows 10 if it was written for 7 and not XP (windows 5!) They are evolutions of the same OS other than when windows jumped from XP to Vista where they just used windows server as they had nothing left that worked. But asking for support on a completetly different version to that supported is a problem when it's not even the same OS other than being based on the same kernel.

Again: Linux is linux. The only difference between versions (not distributions!) are the API versions of the libraries. You have to let go of the idea that each Linux distribution is an entirely different OS. It isn't. All distributions use the same bricks to build it. They only paint the exterior in a different color.

[magic]

So, Red Hat is one of the most prolific contributors to the kernel, but Linux is very, very far from being "mostly Red Hat".

Nitpicking.
When people talk of "Linux", they mean userspace. Statistically speaking, nobody in the world even knows what "a kernel" is.

RedHat employs key developers of ShittyD, PhailAudio, Xorg and Wayland and even GNOME IIRC.

[Simon]

Again: Linux is linux. The only difference between versions (not distributions!) are the API versions of the libraries. You have to let go of the idea that each Linux distribution is an entirely different OS. It isn't. All distributions use the same bricks to build it. They only paint the exterior in a different color.

Tell the program writers this. I understand but these companies will use any excuse to not support their software. As i explained i struggle to get support on windows programs.

[bd139]

Again: Linux is linux. The only difference between versions (not distributions!) are the API versions of the libraries. You have to let go of the idea that each Linux distribution is an entirely different OS. It isn't. All distributions use the same bricks to build it. They only paint the exterior in a different color.

The core kernel ABI/API is the only thing relatively well set in stone. The rest is all over the fucking place. I have lost count over the years of the amount of times I've found a bit of glibc or coreutils broken somewhere. One reason I don't like the GNU stuff is that it's pretty normal for that to happen. The POSIX / BSD lot tend to be a lot more reserved and actually test stuff properly.

Also distribution dependency structuring make it pretty difficult to actually work out a cohesive working pile of software which means we target one distribution, usually RHEL. Why do you think containerisation is popular? Gets rid of "SO hell" . And fuck me some vendors (Canonical) ship broken shit for YEARS on an LTS release before bothering to update it.

Microsoft comparitively speaking actually go for someone extreme API compatibility, with all the detrimental things that brings. I regularly run something that was compiled in 1996 by myself on NT with Visual C++ on a modern windows 10 64-bit box with no problems at all!

[Bud]

Again: Linux is linux. The only difference between versions (not distributions!) are the API versions of the libraries. You have to let go of the idea that each Linux distribution is an entirely different OS. It isn't. All distributions use the same bricks to build it. They only paint the exterior in a different color.

Yes tell me about it. I have seen software that *required libraries downloaded from a particular repo*. The same version , i repeat, the same version of the library from anywhere else did not work or not worked well. How imbecilic is that.

[Simon]

Well i am confused. First I am told that all distros are the same now i am presented with a hellish scenario.

[techman-001]

Why do you think containerization is popular?

Regardless of library problems which affect all OS's (remember DLL hell?) at least Linux is rapidly evolving and can move to container use in distros if they prove to be that long sought after library hell solution.

Interestingly Chromebooks have a user setting to enable native Debian Linux packages to run under ChromeOS, and this system uses containers.

 

[techman-001]

Well i am confused. First I am told that all distros are the same now i am presented with a hellish scenario.

Don't worry about it, any decent admin can sort out OS library problems on any Linux distro or commercial linux product. The Linux toolkit comes with every tool a admin could ever need, the Windows toolkit only has a paperclip inside.

Just don't be fooled into thinking that Windows is somehow immune from DLL HELL, because it's not and never has been.

[Nominal Animal]

First I am told that all distros are the same

Who told you that?  Either you misunderstood, or the other person is an idiot.  Distros vary, but the differences are manageable.  A proper Linux developer makes sure an application or application suite will work even when the environment varies slightly.

In all Linux distros, you can run both Gtk+ and Qt applications.  If your code base is in C, use Gtk+ (Gtk+3); if C++, use Qt (Qt 5).
For graphics-intensive stuff (CAD and similar), you'll want to use OpenGL, but both Gtk+ and Qt have native OpenGL containers for this.

The hardest part is with visual/UX designer humans: they still haven't learned what took a decade for graphic designers doing web work to learn: you do not get to design exactly how the user interface looks, you only get to design how it is organized, and how it adopts to different display devices.  I see these people clamor for "UI polish", but that shit is just eye candy; you should concentrate on the functionality instead.  You think people want eye candy, but that is a misconception: they don't.  It is just that when people do not know how to describe their emotion-based dislike about an interface, saying it is ugly or lacks polish (or even feeling that way), is just the easy way out.  Being specific is hard!  Nevertheless, adding eye candy won't fix a turd.  Humans are just exceptionally bad at explaining why they think something is a turd.

That said, neither Gtk+ or Qt push developers, or even make it easy for developers, to implement things in a way that makes the applications portable.

For example, a standard Gtk+ implementation usually generates all kinds of warnings even in normal use, just because the developers don't care about warnings.  It will still work fine: my point is that the environment makes it easy for lazy application programmers to write code that works on exactly those library versions, but craps itself when anything changes.  It just takes a more disciplined developer to implement things in a robust manner.

Edited to add: FWIF, I disagree with techman-001.  Whoever packages the software, is responsible for correctly representing the dynamic library requirements.

[Simon]

Well i am confused. First I am told that all distros are the same now i am presented with a hellish scenario.

Don't worry about it, any decent admin can sort out OS library problems on any Linux distro or commercial linux product. The Linux toolkit comes with every tool a admin could ever need, the Windows toolkit only has a paperclip inside.

Just don't be fooled into thinking that Windows is somehow immune from DLL HELL, because it's not and never has been.

Oh so now the average Joe can't just use linux he/she needs to be an admin. Err I said this was the problem on page 2 and was shouted down. Now it seems that one does not "just" use linux after all and that special skills are required

[techman-001]

Well i am confused. First I am told that all distros are the same now i am presented with a hellish scenario.

Don't worry about it, any decent admin can sort out OS library problems on any Linux distro or commercial linux product. The Linux toolkit comes with every tool a admin could ever need, the Windows toolkit only has a paperclip inside.

Just don't be fooled into thinking that Windows is somehow immune from DLL HELL, because it's not and never has been.

Oh so now the average Joe can't just use linux he/she needs to be an admin. Err I said this was the problem on page 2 and was shouted down. Now it seems that one does not "just" use linux after all and that special skills are required

It's a shame that you're such a fast forgetter Simon because I said on page 3:-

" I believe there are only USERS and ADMINS.

USERS do what they have been trained to do to use programs on a computer, spreadsheet, browser or click a menu on a car production line and fit a seat for example. If the computer doesn't work, they need the help of a admin.

ADMINS understand the computer, operating systems and programs they can diagnose problems and fix them.

Whether the Computer is Linux, Mac or Windows,  these roles and specialties are exactly the same."

[Simon]

If my employers admins had to do all that in addition to what they already do (mostly make work for themselves to justify their pay) we would have to double the IT admin department so the answer from my employer would be NO!

[bd139]

Why do you think containerization is popular?

Regardless of library problems which affect all OS's (remember DLL hell?) at least Linux is rapidly evolving and can move to container use in distros if they prove to be that long sought after library hell solution.

Interestingly Chromebooks have a user setting to enable native Debian Linux packages to run under ChromeOS, and this system uses containers.

Windows has a solution in that space (NT has full virtualisation support since about 1995) but it didn’t solve any problems. It just copies lots of shitty out of date libraries into each container...

[nctnico]

Again: Linux is linux. The only difference between versions (not distributions!) are the API versions of the libraries. You have to let go of the idea that each Linux distribution is an entirely different OS. It isn't. All distributions use the same bricks to build it. They only paint the exterior in a different color.

Yes tell me about it. I have seen software that *required libraries downloaded from a particular repo*. The same version , i repeat, the same version of the library from anywhere else did not work or not worked well. How imbecilic is that.

That is because of the developer made the mistake to think everyone has a particular library installed. If you look at Linux software packages like the Xilinx tools, Cadence, Firefox, etc you'll see they all come shipped with their own known-good libraries. The only thing they need is a working C library to talk to the OS and a working X-windows. If you are going to depend on specific libraries as a software vendor then you are lost because no matter which OS you use there will be 'DLL hell'. The same problem exists on Windows too if the developer didn't include the right Microsoft Visual C runtime in the installer.

[bd139]

That’s one thing I like about Go as an ecosystem. You just end up with a static binary. That runs on the kernel. No dloading half the universe. Library version updated? Auto build a new binary and run test cases against it and fart it out. Then you can use the original virtualisation system everyone forgot about: processes!

[Nominal Animal]

If my employers admins had to do all that in addition to what they already do (mostly make work for themselves to justify their pay) we would have to double the IT admin department so the answer from my employer would be NO!

Doesn't that mean that your entire argument boils down to "you need to make it cheaper for me!"

Microsofts desktop near-monopoly for two decades means that most admins and desktop software developers have a Microsoft mindset.  (There is nothing sinister about that, it happens in every industry where there is one tool/device brand that has a clear majority.)

It is harder for those people to learn any other mindset, because they first have to unlearn things; and people who consider themselves "professionals" have a lot invested in their current mindset, and are naturally reluctant to go back to basics.  It is much easier to leave them be, and just teach completely new people.  (You can disagree if you like, but I have seen this in practice; it is a commonly observed fact, and not limited to IT tools.)  We can see this for example in how processor manufacturers are shifting away from providing their own compilers, and instead increasingly support GCC (and hopefully LLVM, although I am less certain of that); the high-cost "enterprise" stuff remains, but is stagnant compared to the open source development.

When organizations consider moving from e.g. Windows to Linux desktops, the counterpressure is from people who do not want to unlearn old ways and learn new tools.  From their perspective, it is a waste of their efforts, as they can already do the job.  Because of Android phones, typical office desktop users adapt rather quickly, but the support staff faces huge problems.  In fact, in many cases it would be more cost effective to just replace the entire support staff (up to and including the CTO), but for various reasons, that is usually not feasible.

A practical intermediate step is moving from desktop applications to web-based ones, run on either cloud services, or on local server hardware.  This allows a softer transition for both users and support, but as of 2019, the number of software products is still small; it is more suited for large organizations that provide the majority of their own tools anyway (usually outsourcing their development).  For board design, I particularly like EasyEda as an example of this.

The only really helpful suggestion I can make, is to try and stop looking at the entire Microsoft/Windows-centric software ecosystem as the way to do software business, and realize that there are other ways things can work, and work even better.  Do not let Windows be your only tool, or the metric to which you compare everything else.  You will find that there are better opportunities (healthier competition, ecosystem not controlled by a single vendor, and so on) and better models out there, even though their market caps are still much smaller than the Windows ecosystem's.  Things change.  There is no particular hurry, though; I suspect it takes a full generation for any change to really take hold.

[Simon]

Well you better tell siemens to get solid ehge running on linux. The problem is that the boat has sailed and most people have already bet on windows. Small businesses can be more flexible. people using open source are more likely to be able to switch, for example KiCad. If you do 3D CAD as a business you won't be on linux any time soon.

i really hope things change but I'm not holding my hopes out. Monopolies generally don't serve customers

[Nominal Animal]

Maybe the Siemens developers could ask help from Blender developers?

[Simon]

Maybe the Siemens developers could ask help from Blender developers?

would it make them richer? They have already demonstrated that they are a worthless bunch of gas bags coming out with "new" versions of the softawre every 6 months with no real changes. This is to FORCE you to keep buying upgrades or be signed up to their subscription gravy train becasue if you modify a file with a later version of solid edge you cannot open it on even the previous version. At the moment they are buying people out instead of coming up with their own stuff.

[Nominal Animal]

I feel your frustration, Simon, but I was just pointing out that if a company chooses to sell Linux software or not, it is their choice; there are no technical barriers stopping them, as evidenced by much more complicated and powerful existing software packages.

Granted, Blender Foundation is doing pretty well (as of now, taking in about 74k€/month), but Blender itself is top of the line tech, too.

Now, whether it makes business sense or not for any particular company to sell Linux software, I'm not the right person to say.
If someone is interested in how to minimize maintenance costs and maximize portability for FOSS or mixed-model Linux software, there I can definitely help and show what can/needs to be done; I am just not the right person to do the cost analysis and profitability projections needed to say in any particular case whether it is a good business decision or not.

[Simon]

Basically it's the 80/20 rule with business. Aim to keep 80% of your customers happy and expect 20% to have issues. I'm sure 99.9999% of businesses use Windows. This is my point. There is no real incentive for a change and it will not be happily supported by companies currently supplying windows programs and now just lying back and taking gravy train fees for essentially keeping up with windows compotibility and coding in the extra function every 6 months to justify the upgrade.

[bd139]

Yeah we have 20,000 seats. About 100 macs. The rest windows. It's a windows sausagefest.

[nctnico]

Basically it's the 80/20 rule with business. Aim to keep 80% of your customers happy and expect 20% to have issues. I'm sure 99.9999% of businesses use Windows. This is my point.

But your point is wrong. This has been explained to you many times already. Linux is big in software and electronics engineering.
Your complaints about gravy trains is also completely besides the point. These are just complaints about very specific vendors and don't even remotely have anything to do with the topic: Microsoft moving towards Linux.

[DimitriP]

Don't worry about it, any decent admin can sort out OS library problems on any Linux distro or commercial linux product.

[olkipukki]

Well you better tell siemens to get solid ehge running on linux.

If you really want to run SolidEdge under Linux, there is Siemens NX (that originated on Unix), so they will happy meet you with open arms and sell 10-15K "basic" (+20% maintenance). I doubt that Siemens will translate SolidEdge (that started on Windows) to Linux world, actually many features taken from NX to SolidEdge.

[Mr. Scram]

I suggest to look at a price list of Cadence and the type of companies that use that software. Then look and see that the only platform Cadence supports for all products is RHEL (=Redhat Enterprise Linux). Now try to convince me that companies spending 6 digit figures on software won't demand a certain level of support but users of Solidworks (which costs a fraction in comparison) do? IOW: you are plain wrong in stating that you can't get a properly supported Linux environment to work on. There is more than Windows out there and you have to ask yourself why Cadence relies on Linux instead of porting their applications to Windows.

I never stated that you can't get a supported Linux environment. I stated companies want top to bottom support which includes OS, drivers, hardware and CAD applications. They also tend to want something somewhat universal for various practical reasons instead of a fragmented landscape. That was a response to your claim the engineering world is going Linux. At this point I suspect you're just kicking up dust to distract and divert because the reality of the market doesn't suit your narrative. Again, most people don't give a shit about rosy ideals and just need to get shit done and their asses covered. The fragmentated Linux landscape as it stands has severe issues providing that. We can all wish it to be different but that doesn't change things.

[Simon]

Basically it's the 80/20 rule with business. Aim to keep 80% of your customers happy and expect 20% to have issues. I'm sure 99.9999% of businesses use Windows. This is my point.

But your point is wrong. This has been explained to you many times already. Linux is big in software and electronics engineering.
Your complaints about gravy trains is also completely besides the point. These are just complaints about very specific vendors and don't even remotely have anything to do with the topic: Microsoft moving towards Linux.

Ah yes i remember you. Your the one that moves goal posts when he does not want to answer the question.

what point? i have made several.

As for the topic you know very well that that was abandoned on the first page. Unless of course you have new information to share on what M$ are proposing.

So you know what the user base in electronics engineering on Linux is? Tell us, what percentage of seats are there on linux versus windows?

[Simon]

Well you better tell siemens to get solid ehge running on linux.

If you really want to run SolidEdge under Linux, there is Siemens NX (that originated on Unix), so they will happy meet you with open arms and sell 10-15K "basic" (+20% maintenance). I doubt that Siemens will translate SolidEdge (that started on Windows) to Linux world, actually many features taken from NX to SolidEdge.

Yes I am aware of NX, a collegue has worked on it and tells me it's great albeit as you say expensive. NX is to SE what AD is to CS. But SE ws made for the budget market as a competitor to solid works so i would not be surprised that they have kept it windows only and they treat it as a side project given the way they support it and the bugs.

[Mr. Scram]

But your point is wrong. This has been explained to you many times already. Linux is big in software and electronics engineering.
Your complaints about gravy trains is also completely besides the point. These are just complaints about very specific vendors and don't even remotely have anything to do with the topic: Microsoft moving towards Linux.

You've claimed this a few times but never backed it up.

[bd139]

But your point is wrong. This has been explained to you many times already. Linux is big in software and electronics engineering.
Your complaints about gravy trains is also completely besides the point. These are just complaints about very specific vendors and don't even remotely have anything to do with the topic: Microsoft moving towards Linux.

You've claimed this a few times but never backed it up.

Indeed. Also Microsoft moving to Linux is because they want to sell Azure so this just gives them more market share to rent out.

[nctnico]

Basically it's the 80/20 rule with business. Aim to keep 80% of your customers happy and expect 20% to have issues. I'm sure 99.9999% of businesses use Windows. This is my point.

But your point is wrong. This has been explained to you many times already. Linux is big in software and electronics engineering.
Your complaints about gravy trains is also completely besides the point. These are just complaints about very specific vendors and don't even remotely have anything to do with the topic: Microsoft moving towards Linux.

Ah yes i remember you. Your the one that moves goal posts when he does not want to answer the question.

what point? i have made several.

As for the topic you know very well that that was abandoned on the first page. Unless of course you have new information to share on what M$ are proposing.

So you know what the user base in electronics engineering on Linux is? Tell us, what percentage of seats are there on linux versus windows?

FFS! The poll showing the exact numbers is somewhere on this forum!

[Simon]

I'm sorry. I didn't know I was supposed to know every topic on the forum.

[Halcyon]

Reel it in guys or we're locking this. The topic started off great, but now some of you are just bitching at each other. This isn't a pissing contest.

Either be a geek or take it somewhere else.

[Mr. Scram]

FFS! The poll showing the exact numbers is somewhere on this forum!

A link should be no trouble at all. That way we can discuss the numbers as few of us have seen them before.

[Mr. Scram]

Reel it in guys or we're locking this. The topic started off great, but now some of you are just bitching at each other. This isn't a pissing contest.

Either be a geek or take it somewhere else.

Have you been here before? 

[Halcyon]

Reel it in guys or we're locking this. The topic started off great, but now some of you are just bitching at each other. This isn't a pissing contest.

Either be a geek or take it somewhere else.

Have you been here before? 

This is a pissing contest? ;-)

[Nominal Animal]

No!  Don't pee on computers, they short out.  And it is horrible, horrible I tell you, for the poor technician who is tasked to examine what happened, no matter what the OS is used.

The only thing worse that comes to mind is when new mothers change the baby diapers on their laptops, and ... semi-liquid .. stuff .. leaks into the crevices in the keyboard.

Just because it may look like mustard, don't assume it is, and taste it to see if it is Dijon or the cheap kind.

[Halcyon]

No!  Don't pee on computers, they short out.  And it is horrible, horrible I tell you, for the poor technician who is tasked to examine what happened, no matter what the OS is used.

The only thing worse that comes to mind is when new mothers change the baby diapers on their laptops, and ... semi-liquid .. stuff .. leaks into the crevices in the keyboard.

Just because it may look like mustard, don't assume it is, and taste it to see if it is Dijon or the cheap kind.

Slightly off-topic but it reminds me of when I worked at a computer repair shop as a teenager. We found all sorts of things inside computers. One time we found a dead mouse, another time there was a small snake which made its way into the PSU. If you ever work on someone else's laptop or computer, always wear gloves!

[bsfeechannel]

FFS! The poll showing the exact numbers is somewhere on this forum!

A link should be no trouble at all. That way we can discuss the numbers as few of us have seen them before.

Maybe he's referring to this.

[nctnico]

That one too but there has been a poll on this forum showing (roughly) Linux had a 25% share for primary OS and 25% of the people choose Windows-only. I have no idea where it ended up with the recent forum topic shuffle.

[Mr. Scram]

Maybe he's referring to this.

Calling developers part of engineering? That's controversial even for this thread.  I doubt there were ever any numbers and all the fuss was an attempt to distract from this. Posting a definitive source for would have shut everyone up but none were presented although it's not unlikely they will be retroactively searched for. It's not as if any of that is new.

[bsfeechannel]

That one too but there has been a poll on this forum showing (roughly) Linux had a 25% share for primary OS and 25% of the people choose Windows-only. I have no idea where it ended up with the recent forum topic shuffle.

Well, this one has Linux with 22.8% and Windows with 56.2%.

Pretty impressive. So much for the 2%.

[Mr. Scram]

All that fuss was about a poll on the forum? I thought we were talking about proper market numbers from a reputable outfit concerning engineering as a whole.

[blacksheeplogic]

All that fuss was about a poll on the forum? I thought we were talking about proper market numbers from a reputable outfit concerning engineering as a whole.

Did you expect to have a conversation? I gave up on this thread when the street preachers flocked to the thread. It's just rhetoric and there's nothing of value contributed.

[bsfeechannel]

What more is there to be said? All relevant tech companies in the world endorse Linux. And now Microsoft does the same.

No wonder sensible Microsoft/Windows fanboys shut up long ago.

[Mr. Scram]

Did you expect to have a conversation? I gave up on this thread when the street preachers flocked to the thread. It's just rhetoric and there's nothing of value contributed.

Considering the track record of a number of participants I shouldn't be surprised but I guess I like to retain some hope.

[Mr. Scram]

What more is there to be said? All relevant tech companies in the world endorse Linux. And now Microsoft does the same.

No wonder sensible Microsoft/Windows fanboys shut up long ago.

You could have opened a can of worms but we got lazy bait instead. 

[bsfeechannel]

Considering the track record of a number of participants I shouldn't be surprised but I guess I like to retain some hope.

I very much agree. The thread is about Microsoft adopting, sponsoring and endorsing Linux.

Given the history of Microsoft in embracing trends just to turn them into a nightmare, what are the impacts of that move for Linux? That's what we should be discussing.

Instead, the usual suspects divert the discussion to preach about how proud they are to relinquish their civil rights just to have Windows running on their powerful and brand new hardware and all that bullshit talk.

Or how bewildering is for joe sixpack to choose a distro (who apparently has no problem with choosing his favorite beer among lots of brands). It is the same litany we've been listening for at least the last 20 years over and over again from the same losers.

[Simon]

Microsoft could come up with their own version. It could run the same programs and they could eventually be linux.

[Mr. Scram]

I very much agree. The thread is about Microsoft adopting, sponsoring and endorsing Linux.

Given the history of Microsoft in embracing trends just to turn them into a nightmare, what are the impacts of that move for Linux? That's what we should be discussing.

Instead, the usual suspects divert the discussion to preach about how proud they are to relinquish their civil rights just to have Windows running on their powerful and brand new hardware and all that bullshit talk.

Or how bewildering is for joe sixpack to choose a distro (who apparently has no problem with choosing his favorite beer among lots of brands). It is the same litany we've been listening for at least the last 20 years over and over again from the same losers.

Baiting is all about subtlety. This is about as subtle as a bathtub full of panicked baboons pushed down a flight of stairs. 

[wilfred]

Now that IBM owns Red Hat maybe they will wind down the Z-series mainframes and emulate the architecture on Linux servers.

I just wanted to say it first. I hope I'm first. How's that for a crazy prediction.

Z/OS can only survive whilst there are people experienced in it and they are getting old.

OK so it's not Windows but the old business models are crumbling everywhere.

[bsfeechannel]

OK so it's not Windows but the old business models are crumbling everywhere.

Microsoft have recently realized what others in the industry did long ago: the tech community treats OS as a commodity. Worse (for Microsoft traditional business model): This same community has the means and is willing to voluntarily contribute to its development.

There's no sense in investing in a proprietary solution. They'll spend alone tons of money to develop something that no one is willing to pay. So it is better to offer this community for free the OS this community is not only using, but producing for free. You now make money on apps, not OS.

This strategy is paying off. Microsoft's share price quadrupled since they refocused the company to the new business model.

[Simon]

It would make sense if they offered some standardization in the market. Maybe they will do what linus has had no interest in leading while wondering why no one is using it and create the distro to rule them all or at least set the benchmark so that other distro's will follow. We could end up with several distros still dominating but at least they should all accept the same software equally well. It would also push all of the other software vendors onto linux and if it works on winux it will work on any other linux that complies.

[bsfeechannel]

We will probably see the introduction of the cathedral analogy to Linux (Does anyone know what the cathedral and the bazaar means?). Microsoft will probably end up being the official and organized religion, while the other distros will become the various protestant denominations.

One fear Microsoft always had is the creation of a company as large as they are offering Linux. They spent lots of money trying to prevent that to happen. When they saw that was impossible, they decided to be that company.

But I'm not sure if this is a good thing. If people already complain about Red Hat because they think they are "controlling" the development of Linux, will they be happy if Microsoft took that role?

Linux is about freedom. Has always been. People use Linux because it helps them to do things that they can't do with any Microsoft solution.

[Simon]

If they are no longer interested in the OS and lets face it they fuck up every version of windows before or after release then why would they care. What they will care more about is a standard platform to write the programs on they will sell (lease) instead.

[bsfeechannel]

They are already offering their version of the Linux kernel bundled with Windows 10. It is free software and open source as it should be. But it is their version. I want to see people that complain about Red Hat, now complain about Microsoft doing exactly the same.

[Simon]

so linux programs can work under windows?

[Mr. Scram]

We will probably see the introduction of the cathedral analogy to Linux (Does anyone know what the cathedral and the bazaar means?). Microsoft will probably end up being the official and organized religion, while the other distros will become the various protestant denominations.

One fear Microsoft always had is the creation of a companies as large as they are offering Linux. They spent lots of money trying to prevent that to happen. When they saw that was impossible, they decided to be that company.

But I'm not sure if this is a good thing. If people already complain about Red Hat because they think they are "controlling" the development of Linux, will they be happy if Microsoft took that role?

Linux is about freedom. Has always been. People use Linux because it helps them to do things that they can't do with any Microsoft solution.

As has been discussed before Linux being about freedom is what has allowed it to grow to where it is, but also hampers adoption on the desktop. If Apple has made one thing abundantly clear it's that people don't want endless options. They want a few very well chosen options presented and that's what the Linux desktop world so far has lacked. The first of Raymond's rules is "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch." which is exactly what most projects and forks are. They're personal quests with little intent or capability to deliver a rounded product. You'll inevitably end up with a very fragmented landscape.

[Simon]

As has been discussed before Linux being about freedom is what has allowed it to grow to where it is, but also hampers adoption on the desktop. If Apple has made one thing abundantly clear it's that people don't want endless options. They want a few very well chosen options presented and that's what the Linux desktop world so far has lacked. The first of Raymond's rules is "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch." which is exactly what most projects and forks are. They're personal quests with little intent or capability to deliver a rounded product. You'll inevitably end up with a very fragmented landscape.

Which is what I have been trying to explain since the start. Too much choice is no good. The general public do not know what to pick and neither do business software suppliers. So far Linux does not boed well for the average non technical user.

[Simon]

so linux programs can work under windows?

WSL

Translation

[bsfeechannel]

As has been discussed before Linux being about freedom is what has allowed it to grow to where it is, but also hampers adoption on the desktop. If Apple has made one thing abundantly clear it's that people don't want endless options. They want a few very well chosen options presented and that's what the Linux desktop world so far has lacked. The first of Raymond's rules is "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch." which is exactly what most projects and forks are. They're personal quests with little intent or capability to deliver a rounded product. You'll inevitably end up with a very fragmented landscape.

The fact that it has been discussed before doesn't mean that the conclusions of that discussion are right. Let me help to elucidate.

Apple is about the simplicity that comes after mastering the complexities.

On Windows I have three or four ways of configuring something. Apple has just one way. And it is the most intuitive way. Their inspiration comes from home appliances and cars: machines designed for end users and non specialized operators.

However we have endless home appliance models to choose. This does not prevent the adoption of blenders, refrigerators, microwave ovens and sedans by the general public.

Apple, as Microsoft, is also about establishing a monopoly around them.

What fragmentation does is to prevent a single vendor from being dominant, which is a good thing. Monopolies and free markets are incompatible.

Today we have a dominant operating system vendor on the desktop: Microsoft. And this is not a good thing.

So offering many ways of turning on your blender is bad, but offering many brands of blenders is not.

[bsfeechannel]

Too much choice is no good.

You're starting to talk like a Chinese communist. Read above please.

[bsfeechannel]

MSFT has spent innumerable amount of money to make Windows a universal OS

But it seems that Linux is now THE universal OS. It runs everywhere. Even where we thought to be impossible: inside the very core of Windows.

And it took the tech community just a fraction of what Microsoft spends on Windows to achieve that.

[Mr. Scram]

The fact that it has been discussed before doesn't mean that the conclusions of that discussion are right. Let me help to elucidate.

Apple is about the simplicity that comes after mastering the complexities.

On Windows I have three or four ways of configuring something. Apple has just one way. And it is the most intuitive way. Their inspiration comes from home appliances and cars: machines designed for end users and non specialized operators.

However we have endless home appliance models to choose. This does not prevent the adoption of blenders, refrigerators, microwave ovens and sedans by the general public.

Apple, as Microsoft, is also about establishing a monopoly around them.

What fragmentation does is to prevent a single vendor from being dominant, which is a good thing. Monopolies and free markets are incompatible.

Today we have a dominant operating system vendor on the desktop: Microsoft. And this is not a good thing.

So offering many ways of turning on your blender is bad, but offering many brands of blenders is not.

Fragmentation preventing a single vendor being dominant may be a good thing but it also prevents Linux from going mainstream on desktop. Until the community stops pointing at Microsoft and starts looking at the products it offers that's never going to change and the year of Linux will never come. As we established this changes goes against the core values of a community that's all about endless choice and personal flavours. If it's ever going to happen it's not going to happen any time soon and the community as we currently know it will have to change significantly into something many currently in it will abhor. Ideologies don't win market share, serviceable or even good products do. That's why Android is working out and Linux on the desktop isn't.

[bd139]

Spot on.

[Nominal Animal]

Yup, I agree with Mr. Scram and bd139, above.

That said, I don't want Linux to unify; I'm one of those who values the freedom, and sees the competition between distributions a necessary thing to ensure some kind of evolution and progress.

That said, I would not be opposed to an OS based on the Linux kernel with long-term software compatibility and interfaces in mind, say one with a new local-only GUI; directed towards stability and long-term use, instead of a constant state of further development.  I wouldn't be using it, but it might be what normal users need, especially if the same OS worked equally well on different types of devices.  Something like Android, but for desktops.

What I do oppose, is the idea of options being removed from my reach.  That won't fly.  I am completely satisfied playing with my tools even if they cover just a couple of percent of the market share, as long as they work, and no outside is trying to dictate how they evolve in the future.  But, if you seriously suggest removing options, to "unify" Linux distros, just to make your life easier, I will oppose you.

The problem with Microsoft using Linux is their corporate culture being inextricably intertwined with Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish.  They do that even to their own products.  It is not personal; I dislike current Red Hat because of their attempts of pushing their opinion on the community in general, too.  (I was sorely disappointed when Red Hat shipped a separate compiler for compiling the kernel; that in itself was a sure sign they were on a path not congruent with me maximizing my productivity according to my own preferences.)  I fully expect the Linux MS provides to diverge from upstream, until the ecosystem is clearly divided in two, "Microsoft Linux" and "Other Linuxes", where code is no longer portable between the two.  Hopefully, I am proven wrong in a few years.

[bsfeechannel]

Fragmentation preventing a single vendor being dominant may be a good thing but it also prevents Linux from going mainstream on desktop. Until the community stops pointing at Microsoft and starts looking at the products it offers that's never going to change and the year of Linux will never come. As we established this changes goes against the core values of a community that's all about endless choice and personal flavours. If it's ever going to happen it's not going to happen any time soon and the community as we currently know it will have to change significantly into something many currently in it will abhor. Ideologies don't win market share, serviceable or even good products do. That's why Android is working out and Linux on the desktop isn't.

You don't understand that Android is just yet another Linux option. What made Android work on phones and tablets was that the barrier to entry was low at the time. And Google was fast to realize that.

Give me 100BUS$ and whatever distro you like and I'll make it happen on every desktop on the planet.

Microsoft is not responsible for Linux not happening on the desktop. They're just there. As an enormous mountain that anyone who wants to get hold of this market needs to surpass.

Not even Apple managed to do that. And they had tons of cash and a highly polished and non "fragmented" OS.

So your argument is invalid.

[bsfeechannel]

Yup, I agree with Mr. Scram and bd139, above.

That said, I don't want Linux to unify; I'm one of those who values the freedom, and sees the competition between distributions a necessary thing to ensure some kind of evolution and progress.

That said, I would not be opposed to an OS based on the Linux kernel with long-term software compatibility and interfaces in mind, say one with a new local-only GUI; directed towards stability and long-term use, instead of a constant state of further development.  I wouldn't be using it, but it might be what normal users need, especially if the same OS worked equally well on different types of devices.  Something like Android, but for desktops.

What I do oppose, is the idea of options being removed from my reach.  That won't fly.  I am completely satisfied playing with my tools even if they cover just a couple of percent of the market share, as long as they work, and no outside is trying to dictate how they evolve in the future.  But, if you seriously suggest removing options, to "unify" Linux distros, just to make your life easier, I will oppose you.

The problem with Microsoft using Linux is their corporate culture being inextricably intertwined with Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish.  They do that even to their own products.  It is not personal; I dislike current Red Hat because of their attempts of pushing their opinion on the community in general, too.  (I was sorely disappointed when Red Hat shipped a separate compiler for compiling the kernel; that in itself was a sure sign they were on a path not congruent with me maximizing my productivity according to my own preferences.)  I fully expect the Linux MS provides to diverge from upstream, until the ecosystem is clearly divided in two, "Microsoft Linux" and "Other Linuxes", where code is no longer portable between the two.  Hopefully, I am proven wrong in a few years.

With the exception to the agreement with BD139 and Mr. Scram, I make your words mine.

[Mr. Scram]

You don't understand that Android is just yet another Linux option. What made Android work on phones and tablets was that the barrier to entry was low at the time. And Google was fast to realize that.

Give me 100BUS$ and whatever distro you like and I'll make it happen on every desktop on the planet.

Microsoft is not responsible for Linux not happening on the desktop. They're just there. As an enormous mountain that anyone who wants to get hold of this market needs to surpass.

Not even Apple managed to do that. And they had tons of cash and a highly polished and non "fragmented" OS.

So your argument is invalid.

Just wanting it to be invalid doesn't invalidate something. Android was a success because it was developed by a party with purpose and improved upon the steaming pile that was Windows on mobile devices and upon iOS by being available on affordable devices. It hit both being serviceable and affordable at the same time and got adopted. Linux on desktop is free so the conclusion about its serviceability is obvious.

Apples market shares on desktop is also steadily growing by providing a highly consistent environment. It also provides part of a larger highly consistent ecosystem which includes and integrates the highly profitable mobile devices.

[bsfeechannel]

Alright. Let's forget about this Linux rubbish. I have here a new operating system. It runs Windows applications seamlessly. It is fast, efficient, consistent, blablabla, everything people say Linux isn't.

Now, what do we need to do to beat Microsoft on the desktop? 

[Mr. Scram]

Alright. Let's forget about this Linux rubbish. I have here a new operating system. It runs Windows applications seamlessly. It is fast, efficient, consistent, blablabla, everything people say Linux isn't.

Now, what do we need to do to beat Microsoft on the desktop?

Define "beat". Apple has chosen profitability over market share and arguably wisely.

[bsfeechannel]

Only then, Linux can be proprietary-friendly and be used by the mass.

Bullshit. Who owns the internet? Or the English language?

[Mr. Scram]

Bullshit. Who owns the internet? Or the English language?

Are undersea cables laid by open source ships?

[bsfeechannel]

Alright. Let's forget about this Linux rubbish. I have here a new operating system. It runs Windows applications seamlessly. It is fast, efficient, consistent, blablabla, everything people say Linux isn't.

Now, what do we need to do to beat Microsoft on the desktop?

Sell it to MSFT, Google, Amazon or whatever and retire.

 Thank you. As you can see, you can't beat them.

[bsfeechannel]

Bullshit. Who owns the internet? Or the English language?

Are undersea cables laid by open source ships?

Cables are layer 1. The internet is layers 3 and 4.

[blacksheeplogic]

Alright. Let's forget about this Linux rubbish. I have here a new operating system. It runs Windows applications seamlessly. It is fast, efficient, consistent, blablabla, everything people say Linux isn't.

Now, what do we need to do to beat Microsoft on the desktop?

Unix and Linux have done well in the server space and Linux is a dominant OS in embedded but none of this has occurred though insulting and bullying behavior on forums. You and your choice of an operating system have no ordained rights, it need to compete in the market like any other product and it may never become the dominant desktop choice but it could.

A better attitude is needed that does not involve insulting/bullying behavior towards both people & companies who have a different view to yours, acceptance that some of us run a mixed environment and workflow, chose software by applicability to need not operating system, and that not everyone is interested in adding the choice of an OS to their hobby list.

Once you get to this point, provide a well though out non-emotive set of benefits in $/time and transition plan (change happens over time). Android is a good example, Google did not market Android by insulting the competition, or by getting on forums and attacking people, instead they focused on what it offered and developed both a support and application structure that meet a market need.

I have a mixed environment, I don't know if that will every change but I'm certainly not going to be persuaded by a small group of forum bully's or insults.

[Mr. Scram]

Cables are layer 1. The internet is layers 3 and 4.

You're right. Let's exclusively use those layers. You go first.

[bsfeechannel]

Alright. Let's forget about this Linux rubbish. I have here a new operating system. It runs Windows applications seamlessly. It is fast, efficient, consistent, blablabla, everything people say Linux isn't.

Now, what do we need to do to beat Microsoft on the desktop?

Unix and Linux have done well in the server space and Linux is a dominant OS in embedded but none of this has occurred though insulting and bullying behavior on forums. You and your choice of an operating system have no ordained rights, it need to compete in the market like any other product and it may never become the dominant desktop choice but it could.

A better attitude is needed that does not involve insulting/bullying behavior towards both people & companies who have a different view to yours, acceptance that some of us run a mixed environment and workflow, chose software by applicability to need not operating system, and that not everyone is interested in adding the choice of an OS to their hobby list.

Once you get to this point, provide a well though out non-emotive set of benefits in $/time and transition plan (change happens over time). Android is a good example, Google did not market Android by insulting the competition, or by getting on forums and attacking people, instead they focused on what it offered and developed both a support and application structure that meet a market need.

I have a mixed environment, I don't know if that will every change but I'm certainly not going to be persuaded by a small group of forum bully's or insults.

I'm a sweetheart. You don't know me very well.

So this problem is solved. Now, what do we need to do next to beat Microsoft on the desktop? Remember, I have a polished, intuitive and non fragmented OS ready to ship with PCs. Just the opposite of what people say Linux is.

I need strategists, not nerds, to guide me. Of course if I become billionaire, I will share the profits with whomever came with the winning strategy.

[bsfeechannel]

Unfortunately, Linux will never reach to that point. Linux users are so brainwashed on the concept of freedom, and that's the curse.

When you hear from the mouth of the CEO of one of the largest tech companies in the world that the software you learned to rely on is "cancer" you have a different view.

So, yeah,  talk about insulting, bullying, brainwashing and indoctrination. Not only the amount of money spent trying to stifle Linux development.

[bsfeechannel]

I give no shit to choice and freedom. The only thing I care is efficiency.

They're not mutually exclusive.

When Linux evolves to the point where it can get the jobs done, universally, without jumping through hoops, I might give up MSFT.

Well, it seems I'm 20 years ahead of you.

By the way, I'm not here to evangelize anyone to use Linux. I don't care if you do not use it. I'm not against Microsoft making tons of money with Linux. I don't mind running proprietary software on Linux. I have the freedom to run open source programs on Windows and I like that.

What I'm discussing is the consequences for the Linux community with Microsoft adopting it. Microsoft past, that involved an active campaign to reduce our freedom (i.e. the viability of Linux), makes us accept everything they do related to Linux with a grain of salt.

Linux users are not fanatics. I use Linux because it helps me make money. And I don't use Microsoft because it makes me waste money. That's the reason that made switch to Linux, and nothing Microsoft did to this day remedied this situation.

[bsfeechannel]

When your LibreOffice runs snappier than my MS Office, we can talk. Also, it's not that I haven't used LibreOffice/OOo. I've been using only them since 2010 to 2017, and eventually I snapped due to pixel alignment bug of Draw, crashing issue with Calc and MSFT incompatibility issues with Write.

First world problems.

$229 saved me a lot of swearing.

I have a better destination for that money than Bill's pocket: my pocket.

Did I see GitHub dead? Did I see Xamarin dead? Did I see VSCode dead?

Given what they did in the past, we need to give them more time until they win our trust. Until there, we'll keep an eye on them.

[Mr. Scram]

They're not mutually exclusive.
Well, it seems I'm 20 years ahead of you.

By the way, I'm not here to evangelize anyone to use Linux. I don't care if you do not use it. I'm not against Microsoft making tons of money with Linux. I don't mind running proprietary software on Linux. I have the freedom to run open source programs on Windows and I like that.

What I'm discussing is the consequences for the Linux community with Microsoft adopting it. Microsoft past, that involved an active campaign to reduce our freedom (i.e. the viability of Linux), makes us accept everything they do related to Linux with a grain of salt.

Linux users are not fanatics. I use Linux because it helps me make money. And I don't use Microsoft because it makes me waste money. That's the reason that made switch to Linux, and nothing Microsoft did to this day remedied this situation.

The comments in this thread are not an attempt to evangelize Linux and Linux users are not fanatics? Our definitions seem disparate. Certainly not all Linux users are fanatics but the ideology seems to attract a fair few. It's obvious companies work in their own best interest and not yours. That's true for pretty much any company including almost all who pretend not to. That doesn't preclude also benefiting from the situation and as long as you do there is a workable relationship. I think that describes the relationship most people have with Microsoft. Microsoft's solutions yield considerable gains at an acceptable cost, in whatever form those costs and gains come. People don't opt for Microsoft because they align with its goals and purposes but because it helps the bottom line. It's a tool and a means to an end and not an end in itself.

[bd139]

Actually interesting turn up here. I have been using office 2016. I managed to get hold of a product key for 2019 from MSDN so i figured I would update it to keep on the edge so to speak. Installed it in a test VM (I evaluate software before I use it properly) and it requires that you sign in during activation now. No way around it. This turned into a bit of a problem because I use Duo SSO and the sign in for my MS account just presents a white box with nothing in it. Therefore I can’t activate software I depend on without disabling Duo and violating my secpol. I tried the same with O365 and it appears to do the same. This is not Duo’s fault because VS2019 sign in works. Thus I suspect this represents a business continuity risk. Prior to latest 2019, sign in to office isn’t required and straight activation works. Activation as such represents a 3/10 risk but this adds paid support case to that risk which ups it to a 10/10

This actually makes me consider other alternatives.

The points on hoop jumping apply here too.

[Simon]

Too much choice is no good.

You're starting to talk like a Chinese communist. Read above please.

There is competition and there is a cartel. If you live in the Uk just look at our energy market. Linux has the same issue but instead of being a cartel where people agree to fix it all the same anyway they diverge. The whole reason why there are so many distributions is because developers want to diverge. Customers want a clear choice.

[Mr. Scram]

Actually interesting turn up here. I have been using office 2016. I managed to get hold of a product key for 2019 from MSDN so i figured I would update it to keep on the edge so to speak. Installed it in a test VM (I evaluate software before I use it properly) and it requires that you sign in during activation now. No way around it. This turned into a bit of a problem because I use Duo SSO and the sign in for my MS account just presents a white box with nothing in it. Therefore I can’t activate software I depend on without disabling Duo and violating my secpol. I tried the same with O365 and it appears to do the same. This is not Duo’s fault because VS2019 sign in works. Thus I suspect this represents a business continuity risk. Prior to latest 2019, sign in to office isn’t required and straight activation works. Activation as such represents a 3/10 risk but this adds paid support case to that risk which ups it to a 10/10

This actually makes me consider other alternatives.

The points on hoop jumping apply here too.

Considering I don't like or agree with many of the recent changes to convert the software and ecosystem into saas I'm kind of hoping Microsoft will shoot its own foot like that. They've historically been pretty good at doing that and making the new model too much of a liability should cause enough of a stir to ease off a bit. My threshold is indeed needing to sign in online to applications and Windows itself to use them when running them locally has been done for ages. I cannot accept such an increased liability for business reasons other than my own.

[bsfeechannel]

Too much choice is no good.

You're starting to talk like a Chinese communist. Read above please.

There is competition and there is a cartel. If you live in the Uk just look at our energy market. Linux has the same issue but instead of being a cartel where people agree to fix it all the same anyway they diverge. The whole reason why there are so many distributions is because developers want to diverge. Customers want a clear choice.

I am a customer and I like all the options Linux has to offer. The more the better. Same thing with whatever other products. I don't know a single person that wants to be locked to a single option.

[Mr. Scram]

I am a customer and I like all the options Linux has to offer. The more the better. Same thing with whatever other products. I don't know a single person that wants to be locked to a single option.

Apple.

[bsfeechannel]

The comments in this thread are not an attempt to evangelize Linux and Linux users are not fanatics? Our definitions seem disparate. Certainly not all Linux users are fanatics but the ideology seems to attract a fair few.

Never forget that Microsoft also spins around ideologies too. Remember the "Open Letter to Hobbyists"? Just for a start.

Microsoft's solutions yield considerable gains at an acceptable cost, in whatever form those costs and gains come. People don't opt for Microsoft because they align with its goals and purposes but because it helps the bottom line. It's a tool and a means to an end and not an end in itself.

OK. I'm fine with that. You want Microsoft? Knock yourself out. I don't care. Never cared.

What I cared is that Microsoft tried actively to invalidate my choice. They spread all kinds of misconceptions about Free Software, calling it a cancer, Unamerican, and other pejorative adjectives. They lobbied for draconian intellectual property laws and software patents. And many other actions already listed by forum members in this thread.

On top of that they created this mindset manifested by many in this thread, including you, that someone that rejects Microsoft and adopts Linux must be looked down on, Linux is crap and the community is a bunch of brainwashed activists.

None of this is true. Linux is an proven industrial grade OS, the community is composed by relevant entities in the tech industry and what motivates its development is the freedom, translated into money and/or other values, they can have with it.

[Mr. Scram]

Never forget that Microsoft also spins around ideologies too. Remember the "Open Letter to Hobbyists"? Just for a start.

OK. I'm fine with that. You want Microsoft? Knock yourself out. I don't care. Never cared.

What I cared is that Microsoft tried actively to invalidate my choice. They spread all kinds of misconceptions about Free Software, calling it a cancer, Unamerican, and other pejorative adjectives. They lobbied for draconian intellectual property laws and software patents. And many other actions already listed by forum members in this thread.

On top of that they created this mindset manifested by many in this thread, including you, that someone that rejects Microsoft and adopts Linux must be looked down on, Linux is crap and the community is a bunch of brainwashed activists.

None of this is true. Linux is an proven industrial grade OS, the community is composed by relevant entities in the tech industry and what motivates its development is the freedom, translated into money and/or other values, they can have with it.

That letter is ancient history and also was intended to serve the bottom line. I'm not sure why you say you don't care when you obviously do?

[Simon]

I am a customer and I like all the options Linux has to offer. The more the better. Same thing with whatever other products. I don't know a single person that wants to be locked to a single option.

Apple.

Windows!

[bsfeechannel]

That letter is ancient history and also was intended to serve the bottom line. I'm not sure why you say you don't care when you obviously do?

I don't care if YOU want to use Windows. I care if Microsoft wants to impose their products on me and in the process kill the alternatives. I've seen them do it, or at least try to do it, more than once.

The letter shows Gates' ideology very clearly. What I mean is that if Open Source is driven by ideologies, so are Microsoft.

[bsfeechannel]

I care if Microsoft wants to impose their products on me and in the process kill the alternatives.

Free market. Let it brings us to wherever it brings us to.

Including lawsuits for illegal business practices.

[bsfeechannel]

I am a customer and I like all the options Linux has to offer. The more the better. Same thing with whatever other products. I don't know a single person that wants to be locked to a single option.

Apple.

Windows!

That they want to be your hidden partner on every transaction (i. e., collecting their fee), everyone knows. What many don't notice is that they indoctrinate people to think that having options is a bad thing.

[BravoV]

I am a customer and I like all the options Linux has to offer. The more the better. Same thing with whatever other products. I don't know a single person that wants to be locked to a single option.

Apple.

Windows!

That they want to be your hidden partner on every transaction (i. e., collecting their fee), everyone knows. What many don't notice is that they indoctrinate people to think that having options is a bad thing.

C'mon, you just can not over generalized every people here, as I strongly believe quite majority of this discussion members here are "fully" aware of the trade offs vs benefits. (eg: loosing "part of" our own privacy,money etc you name it vs the benefits reaped).

No different than using credit card.

[Mr. Scram]

That they want to be your hidden partner on every transaction (i. e., collecting their fee), everyone knows. What many don't notice is that they indoctrinate people to think that having options is a bad thing.

Nonsense, Windows has plenty of options.

[RoGeorge]

[ v ] Hide extensions for known file type  (<-- bad)
[    ] Hide extensions for known file type  (<-- good)
 

[Simon]

[ v ] Hide extensions for known file type  (<-- bad)
[    ] Hide extensions for known file type  (<-- good)
 

The default is setup for the dumb average user that does not understand file extensions and will invariably rename files and loose the extension breaking how windows knows which program the file can be opened by. Windows 10 has tried to mitigate this by autoselecting the file name and not the dot and extension when renaming. Again an example of windows catering for a less technical minded rather than tell them to go code their own solution if they don't like it which is the standard response on a linux forum.

[taydin]

That is my biggest complaint with Microsoft software.

Microsoft software tries to be intelligent and assumes the user is dumb.

I want a software that is dumb, but does exactly what the intelligent user tells it to do, nothing more, nothing less. If I tell it to wipe out the entire root directory (rm -rf /), it should just do that, without saying (are you sure?) (yes) (all data on the harddirve will be deleted, this cannot be undone! type YES to confirm) (YES)

[Simon]

That is my biggest complaint with Microsoft software.

Microsoft software tries to be intelligent and assumes the user is dumb.

I want a software that is dumb, but does exactly what the intelligent user tells it to do, nothing more, nothing less. If I tell it to wipe out the entire root directory (rm -rf /), it should just do that, without saying (are you sure?) (yes) (all data on the harddirve will be deleted, this cannot be undone! type YES to confirm) (YES)

Well windows gives you the option. You may show the extensions or not. If you eliminate the dumb users you eliminate the economies of scale. This is the problem of Linux, it is limited to power users and admins.

[Monkeh]

That is my biggest complaint with Microsoft software.

Microsoft software tries to be intelligent and assumes the user is dumb.

I want a software that is dumb, but does exactly what the intelligent user tells it to do, nothing more, nothing less. If I tell it to wipe out the entire root directory (rm -rf /), it should just do that, without saying (are you sure?) (yes) (all data on the harddirve will be deleted, this cannot be undone! type YES to confirm) (YES)

Well windows gives you the option. You may show the extensions or not. If you eliminate the dumb users you eliminate the economies of scale. This is the problem of Linux, it is limited to power users and admins.

And some file managers on linux might give you that option. You know, I've never looked because it's stupid to hide part of the file name. Even for so-called 'dumb users'. They'll have difficulty understanding how two files can have the same name because the tool is lying to them.

[Simon]

And some file managers on linux might give you that option. You know, I've never looked because it's stupid to hide part of the file name. Even for so-called 'dumb users'. They'll have difficulty understanding how two files can have the same name because the tool is lying to them.

I would rather my father not to have access to file extensions. He would make a right mess of everything.

[bd139]

File extensions are silly really anyway. A hang back from stupider computing systems.

RISC OS got this right. Each file had type metadata. No extensions!

[Monkeh]

File extensions are silly really anyway. A hang back from stupider computing systems.

RISC OS got this right. Each file had type metadata. No extensions!

And when you have two files of the same name with different types?

[Karel]

GNU/Linux is designed by engineers, for engineers.
This will very likely prevent GNU/Linux from conquering the desktop (apart from chrome OS which is a castrated/limited version of GNU/Linux which I detest).
I consider this a good thing. The actual marketshare on the desktop is, depending on the sources, between 1 and 2%.
I believe we can safely assume that most users are engineers or otherwise "powerusers". So, the desktop marketshare under engineers and powerusers is much higher.
(I like to think 20 - 25%).
This is enough to keep Linux compatibel workstations and notebooks available.
Also, it helps to keep the dumb and/or uninterested people away.
As long as GNU/Linux desktop marketshare is between 1 and 2%, I'm happy.

https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx

[Simon]

Linux was written by Linus for him to use on a desktop....... Decades later he can't understand why everyone else is not using linux on a desktop......

[Monkeh]

Linux was written by Linus for him to use on a desktop....... Decades later he can't understand why everyone else is not using linux on a desktop......

Decades later I can't see what your point is meant to be.

He started writing an OS for himself. For fun and learning. He shared it. The ecosystem you see today mostly has nothing to do with Linus - he runs development of one component.

[bsfeechannel]

C'mon, you just can not over generalized every people here, as I strongly believe quite majority of this discussion members here are "fully" aware of the trade offs vs benefits. (eg: loosing "part of" our own privacy,money etc you name it vs the benefits reaped).

No different than using credit card.

Are you sure about that? People help a company that employs criminal tricks to destroy the alternatives and then these same people keep bitching about how crappy the solution this resulting monopolistic company has to offer.

When you show that there are alternatives that managed to survive the vile tactics of the monopoly, people bitch about them not being mainstream.

Does Dave still have that ticket to Mars? I'll see how much he wants for it.

[bsfeechannel]

GNU/Linux is designed by engineers, for engineers.
This will very likely prevent GNU/Linux from conquering the desktop

Nope. I showed that this is not what is preventing Linux to "conquer" the desktop.

(apart from chrome OS which is a castrated/limited version of GNU/Linux which I detest).

You see? This confirms what I said. You have a big company (Google) with lots of money, connections, resources, which is capable of facing Microsoft's army.

And if they don't employ the right strategy, they won't succeed.

I consider this a good thing. The actual marketshare on the desktop is, depending on the sources, between 1 and 2%.
I believe we can safely assume that most users are engineers or otherwise "powerusers". So, the desktop marketshare under engineers and powerusers is much higher.

Nope, again. There are people using Linux on the desktop without any tech background. I know at least two. One is the principal of a school and the other is an accountant. I've seen countless cashiers using it too. But I'm not sure I can consider cash registers to be called desktop.

(I like to think 20 - 25%).
This is enough to keep Linux compatibel workstations and notebooks available.
Also, it helps to keep the dumb and/or uninterested people away.
As long as GNU/Linux desktop marketshare is between 1 and 2%, I'm happy.

https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx

Linux simply works on the desktop. And that's all that counts.

[bd139]

File extensions are silly really anyway. A hang back from stupider computing systems.

RISC OS got this right. Each file had type metadata. No extensions!

And when you have two files of the same name with different types?

You can't!

Which is a problem with extensions...

MYDOCUMENT.doc (extension hidden)
MYDOCUMENT.lnk (extension hidden, icon set to word document, actually runs c:\users\idiot\appdata\local\nasty-takeover.cmd)

[Monkeh]

You can't!

Which is a problem with extensions...

MYDOCUMENT.doc (extension hidden)
MYDOCUMENT.lnk (extension hidden, icon set to word document, actually runs c:\users\idiot\appdata\local\nasty-takeover.cmd)

mycode.c
mycode.h

fuck.

Here's an idea, just don't hide extensions.

[bd139]

You can't!

Which is a problem with extensions...

MYDOCUMENT.doc (extension hidden)
MYDOCUMENT.lnk (extension hidden, icon set to word document, actually runs c:\users\idiot\appdata\local\nasty-takeover.cmd)

mycode.c
mycode.h

fuck.

Here's an idea, just don't hide extensions.

Yeah that was a big problem. Source code is usually labelled:

mycode
mycode/h

Both are type C

Which actually makes more sense. Path separator is "." for ref on that platform for ref.

Also on windows this doesn't make any difference... thanks to how windows explorer handles extensions on shortcuts...

[Simon]

You can't!

Which is a problem with extensions...

MYDOCUMENT.doc (extension hidden)
MYDOCUMENT.lnk (extension hidden, icon set to word document, actually runs c:\users\idiot\appdata\local\nasty-takeover.cmd)

You are exagerating. The icons change to signal the different file type. This is the dumb user mode. The rest of us simply unhide them and go ahead with our business.

As illustarted above it would make code writting hard to the point people will make same but different file names which is what the name extensions are already.

[bd139]

See my screenshot above...

I have used this to take over a corporate AD network before. This is one of the hats I wear during the day for reference. A sort of white coloured one...

[Monkeh]

See my screenshot above...

I have used this to take over a corporate AD network before. This is one of the hats I wear during the day for reference. A sort of white coloured one...

Well, Windows sucks, yes.

[bd139]

Users suck even more. All you have to do is present them with something that looks legitimate and they click righ through all the prompts. Even the windows techs  . Windows is just an enabler for stupid . That's why we now enforce separate administrator accounts...

Then again those curl || bash nightmares you see on Linux are fun too.

[Nominal Animal]

That's why we now enforce separate administrator accounts...

On Linux systems, whenever a fellow admin uses sudo su - , I die inside a little.

(Well over a decade ago, I developed a simple group-based rights management for overlapping web admins.  When I became an admin of a computing cluster, with admins who have never physically met each other, and who all had that I-do-everything-as-root habit and disliked sudo, I started researching a way to transparently track changes in configuration directories based on processes, tracked back (via processes and controlling terminals) to an user account even if done as root.  I found a way to do it (several: audit subsystem, individual file leases, and later fanotify), but unsurprisingly, everyone else felt it was "not necessary"...  Apparently tracking changes back to the person who made them is not something many admins would appreciate.  Me, I'm paranoid: I don't trust even myself )

[bd139]

Yeah that kills me. I worked on one of those deployments circa 2003. The dude was running a fairly old at that point RH box (think it was 7.2) and it was running perl CGI serving an online record shop and I mistakenly picked up the job of attempting to move it to a new machine. The previous sysadmin made his 15 minutes of fame on BBC news web site by riding his motorbike into the front of a truck. Everything was one offs and he coded the entire site in production on the live site!  . He liked living it risky by the sounds. Fed up of the mess he left I actually basically wrote ansible in perl to give "desired state configuration" before it was even a thing. I didn't see the value of it as a business opportunity and used it for nearly 10 years. Then I discovered ansible. Then ansible got bought by redhat for $150M. Fucks sake! Missed out on that one

[SiliconWizard]

Windows is just an enabler for stupid

I liked that one.

I don't think that's quite true though. It's not that it's an enabler for stupid (well, not any more, and maybe a little less, than MacOS or Android for that matter), but it's that it still sits between two chairs after over 25 years. It has done everything it could  to appeal to the stupid more and more, yet is still completely manageable only by computer savvy people. So, you basically get treated like stupid while you need to be knowledgeable to use it properly at some point.
 

[techman-001]

Windows is just an enabler for stupid

I liked that one.

I don't think that's quite true though. It's not that it's an enabler for stupid (well, not any more, and maybe a little less, than MacOS or Android for that matter), but it's that it still sits between two chairs after over 25 years. It has done everything it could  to appeal to the stupid more and more, yet is still completely manageable only by computer savvy people. So, you basically get treated like stupid while you need to be knowledgeable to use it properly at some point.
 

Are you sure you want to say the above ?

Are you really sure you want to say the above ?

Are you really, really sure you want to say the above ?

[bsfeechannel]

See how life is ironic. Before Microsoft bought Skype I used it on a regular basis. They bought them out and after some time I still could use it on my Linux box. Then Microsoft announced that my version would not be able to transmit video or audio, just text. Because of that I abandoned Skype.

Today I needed to send a text message to someone that's in my Skype contact list. But to my surprise I discovered that Microsoft doesn't let my Skype client even establish a connection. I can't even login.

Ok. So I opened my browser and tried to use Skype online. My browser is not supported. They say that I need a supported browser because with that they can provide a better "Skype experience". Their supported browser can't be installed on this machine running Linux. Only running Windows.

No need to say that I'm already having the worst Skype experience possible because they unilaterally decided that my hardware and software are not good enough for them. So their supported browser will certainly give me a better Skype experience: the experience of at least being able to login. Holy crap!

We're back to the 90s and early 2000's when this type of thing was created by them. Only their browser was allowed to access certain web pages, because of the browser wars.

Ok. So I have a "supported" browser on my phone. Now my device is not supported. They are forcing me to download their app. No, sir. I don't have storage space for Skype on my phone. Dogdarnit! Wasn't my browser the problem? I'm using their recommended browser, now. So they defeated the purpose of Skype online.

If I felt that I was being discriminated, now I feel like I'm being treated like an idiot. 

But, Ok. I have Windows 7 with the Skype app and their recommended browser. Rebooted and called Windows. It took 5 minutes to boot. Told me not to turn off my computer because it was finishing the previous update. Then it rebooted before I could login and took another 5 minutes to configure the computer.

I ran Skype. Same thing. Could not establish a connection.

Ok. I have a "supported" browser on Windows 7. Yay! I finally sent the message.

Then Windows said that it had 4 updates to install. It took 45 minutes to download little more than 300MB. Where I am right now, I don't have the fastest internet connection in the world, but 300MB certainly takes much less than 45 minutes to download. It took another 35 minutes to install the updates and it is asking me to reboot my computer which will take an entire geological era to perform.   

Days ago someone told me about Zoom. It installed smoothly on my Linux machine. No discrimination, no hassle, no "experience" bullshit. It just gets the job done.

This is an example that options, alternative, choice create efficiency and that they're not mutually exclusive.

So, what is Microsoft? It is a retarded company, run by retarded people, that produces retarded software for retarded people.

Before someone says that I am bullying and being offensive, the word retarded comes from latin retardare, which means to delay, protract, move slowly, hold up.

So Microsoft is a retarded company: they still want to control how people have access to technology. They live in the past when technology was a specialty. Now it is a commodity. So they are retarded.

They are run by retarded people: do they really believe that conforming to their stupid requirements just to send a text message is the smartest thing in the world? Now you understand why people still use IRC.

Their software is retarded: man, almost two hours for an update? Gimme a break!

And it is for retarded people: I was instantly retarded after I decided to use Microsoft's Skype. It was a waste of my time trying figure out how to send the message, and on top of that I had to babysit this piece of crap until it finished the update.

Before Microsoft, Skype was a wonderful experience. Worked ok on my machine no problems. It seems that they have a reverse Midas touch: they turn everything they touch into shit.

That's why we are still suspicious about their approach to Linux.

[RoGeorge]

See how life is ironic. Before Microsoft bought Skype I used it on a regular basis. They bought them out and after some time I still could use it on my Linux box. Then Microsoft announced that my version would not be able to transmit video or audio, just text. Because of that I abandoned Skype.

Today I needed to send a text message to someone that's in my Skype contact list. But to my surprise I discovered that Microsoft doesn't let my Skype client even establish a connection. I can't even login.

Ok. So I opened my browser and tried to use Skype online. My browser is not supported. They say that I need a supported browser because with that they can provide a better "Skype experience". Their supported browser can't be installed on this machine running Linux. Only running Windows.

No need to say that I'm already having the worst Skype experience possible because they unilaterally decided that my hardware and software are not good enough for them. So their supported browser will certainly give me a better Skype experience: the experience of at least being able to login. Holy crap!

LOL, hold my beer!
Microsoft doesn't let me to login to my GitHub account because it thinks my password is too weak.  I never asked them for such protection, same way I never ask for "enhanced experiences".

[Karel]

When microsoft bought github, I moved everything to Gitlab.

Facebook and whatsapp are offlimits here. I use Telegram. My colleagues as well.

The same problems are happening now with google. I recently moved to Protonmail.

The thing is: stay away from proprietary software giants.

"Proprietary Software Giants Tell Open Source ‘Communities’ That Proprietary Software Giants Are ‘Friends’"

http://techrights.org/2019/09/14/proprietary-software-giants-as-friends/

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a communist. But in order for capitalism to work correctly, monopoly abuse needs to be punished.

[Simon]

Capitalism is supposed to be about a free market, not a monopoly, that is called a.... monopoly, although too much free market does make for other problems.

[Karel]

In a free market there will be a monopoly eventualy.
That's why most "free" markets are not really free but have rules to keep the competition
and try to avoid monopolies where possible and, if a monopoly exists, to check for and punish abuse.

So, a really free market is not what you want.

[Warhawk]

I feel windows is mainly plagued by 'windows haters' these days. Windows is actually for most users quite stable and efficient to work with.

A large part of the problem is that Windows 8 / 10 is really easy to hate and this is coming from a veteran of Windows. It's honestly the most retarded version of Windows I have *ever* used.

Over the past 12 months, I've been learning Linux and have switched to it as my daily driver just so I don't have to use Windows 10. At work, I use expensive HP Workstations and at times Windows 10 still runs like crap or glitches out for no apparent reason. Even on my less powerful (Intel i5 based PC), Windows 7 was more responsive and stable with half the amount of RAM.

Interesting, I wanted to write identical thing.

[Simon]

I have no end of problems on the work PC that don't happen at home mainly becaue it is a remotely administered system that locks us users down. I cannot write code on my work PC in atmel studio which is dumb, neither can I send a sketch to an arduino....

[SiliconWizard]

Capitalism and free market are two different things though. The fact that they seem to go hand in hand does not make them the same.

[Monkeh]

See how life is ironic. Before Microsoft bought Skype I used it on a regular basis. They bought them out and after some time I still could use it on my Linux box. Then Microsoft announced that my version would not be able to transmit video or audio, just text. Because of that I abandoned Skype.

Today I needed to send a text message to someone that's in my Skype contact list. But to my surprise I discovered that Microsoft doesn't let my Skype client even establish a connection. I can't even login.

Ok. So I opened my browser and tried to use Skype online. My browser is not supported. They say that I need a supported browser because with that they can provide a better "Skype experience". Their supported browser can't be installed on this machine running Linux. Only running Windows.

No need to say that I'm already having the worst Skype experience possible because they unilaterally decided that my hardware and software are not good enough for them. So their supported browser will certainly give me a better Skype experience: the experience of at least being able to login. Holy crap!

LOL, hold my beer!
Microsoft doesn't let me to login to my GitHub account because it thinks my password is too weak.  I never asked them for such protection, same way I never ask for "enhanced experiences".

The only reason you're whinging about Microsoft is because Github have made a decision you don't agree with, for your own good. Microsoft likely had little or nothing to do with it. Get over it.

[RoGeorge]

The only reason you're whinging about Microsoft is because Github have made a decision you don't agree with, for your own good. Microsoft likely had little or nothing to do with it. Get over it.

Not at all, what really annoys is why there is no Windows 9?
One can not just jump from 8 to 10, and expect people to live happily ever after!
 

Later edit:
If you really care why I don't like what happened, is the part I underlined in the quoted words.  First of all, it is NOT for my own good, it's for Microsoft's own good, to spare them for any trouble that might come.  At most, you can say is for the herd's good, like vaccination, but don't tell it's for my own good.

No company cares about RoGeorge's own good, or about your own good.  That would be a lie.

Apart from that, my philosophy in life is rather like this one:

"- Do you know how many electrical cords I chewed?"



For those that can not play YouTube, the answer is at around minute 1:05

"- One!  It shocked me.  I walked backwards for a week, but I never chew a cord again."

[Simon]

Every even numbered windows has been bad. this time we did not get the usual reprieve and then 7 was snatched from us. 10 is so bad that they had to make it free to upgrade whilst threatening to end support for 7.

[bd139]

7 was bloody awful.

[drussell]

Not at all, what really annoys is why there is no Windows 9?

The reason is very simple.  Many programmers write terrible code.  Many pieces of code that tried to detect what type of Windows version they were running, rather than actually checking capabilities, like if they were "NT" or not, for example, looked at the version string and assumed that anything beginning with a 9 was Windows 95/98.  Microsoft found this was going to be a significant issue very early on in the development process (well, probably didn't "find" it, it was already well known) that it would cause a myriad of problems, therefore was essentially always planned to be skipped.

[james_s]

Not at all, what really annoys is why there is no Windows 9?
One can not just jump from 8 to 10, and expect people to live happily ever after!

The thing I thought was funny is the way they talked about skipping 9 because 10 was such a massive departure from 8. That was a laugh, I would have called it Windows 8.5, it is practically the same OS with a start menu that is inferior to that in all previous versions, a horrible update system and a whole bunch of marketing baked in. One step forward, two steps back.

[Nominal Animal]

That's one reason why having competing OSes/distros is important: the users get to choose which one they like better.

[bd139]

I don’t like any of them 

[RoGeorge]

I don’t like any of them 

Then you should do what Stallman and Linus did.  Build a new one exactly the way you'd like it to be.
After you'll accomplish those goals, prepare to hand away your lifetime work to an angry mob.   

[drussell]

I don’t like any of them 

I've been running FreeBSD since 1994, version 1.1....

Ever since the first day that I saw it was running wcarchive.cdrom.com, it has been my favorite OS.

Have you tried it?

[bd139]

Yes I have. I ran FreeBSD for the best part of a decade from 2.2 when it dropped. Also NetBSD on SPARC.

I jest when I say I like nothing as FreeBSD is pretty much excellent. If anything it suffers a little from neglect as a lot of stuff is Linux only these days due to laziness on the part of the developers and the creeping bits of Linux working their way into the software (everything depends on fucking systemd-devel now at compile time)

[Nominal Animal]

the creeping bits of Linux working their way into the software (everything depends on fucking systemd-devel now at compile time)

Hey!   systemd isn't Linux!  I don't know what shit it is, but just because most, but not all, Linux distros use it, does not make it Linux either.  We still have Devuan and Gentoo at least.

I don't care what systemd developers say, either.  They obviously want to subsume all of Linux, like frigging Borg (but with a shitload of bugs built-in, on top of a silly fragile internal structure; so, shitty Borg defeatable with a toothpick.. but popular, like Kardashians).

The actual Linux-isms, like using /proc/PID/ pseudofiles for process information, are usually separated into functions so one can rather easily provide the same facilities on BSDs in the native BSD-way.

[bd139]

Redhat says its linux therefore it is. I'm not happy either for ref.

Worst one is assuming the default shell is bash. Plus the 9 million "GNU extensions" (aka fuck ups) of literally every damn command line tool. gawk vs awk is a favourite of mine. I must say I shook my head for a bit when they made bash the default shell in OSX.

[Nominal Animal]

Worst one is assuming the default shell is bash.

Although I do have it as my default shell, I do write portable POSIX shell scripts too (although I can only test them with dash and bash --posix).
I used to do that a lot more in the sysv init days, too.
Nowadays, I only get bitten by that occasionally, on SBCs using busybox.

gawk vs awk is a favourite of mine.

When filtering large text files (say, molecular dynamics data), mawk is significantly faster than gawk.

FWIW, the gawk manual is pretty clear about what is a gawk extension instead of standard awk, so I assume any/all gawkisms are either deliberate or stupidity.  (I am myself stupid rather frequently, but at least I'm willing to admit it and happy to fix it whenever caught.)

[bd139]

The problem with the gawk thing bit me when I was trying to backport something someone had written from Linux to the FreeBSD box we were replacing it with. It turned out there were a LOT of GNU extensions used and non standard bits of regex. I had to port about 20 undocumented piece of shit regexes to something portable. This is where the cancer in that job was: https://www.math.utah.edu/docs/info/gawk_5.html#SEC29

[Nominal Animal]

Eww!  In my defense, I've never used those, and I usually recommend POSIX extended regular expressions (and usually link to that Wikipedia page), noting that some tools like regcomp() by default use the basic ones.

I have used gawk extensions in cases where I've needed to sort an array while iterating/scanning another, because gawk has asort()/asorti(), and I was too lazy to implement my own, and didn't trust all implementations worked correctly if changing the scan order environment during an array scan.

To be clear: I find it valuable for scripts and applications developed on Linux to be portable (with minimum fuss) to BSDs and other systems.
It isn't even hard.  For example, when an application requires information gathered in Linux from /proc/ pseudofiles, I like to use an external script that pipes the data in pre-munged form.  When porting to FreeBSD, that script is typically replaced with a program.  Same when porting to other OSes.  This does not tie my hands at all, makes it easy to debug typical problems related to upgrades/porting, and in general, I like the adaptability of such apps.
It's not even rare nowadays, as many applications (especially browsers) use a start-up script to execute the actual binary.  Profile selection etc. is usually a separate program.

[techman-001]

the creeping bits of Linux working their way into the software (everything depends on fucking systemd-devel now at compile time)

Hey!   systemd isn't Linux!  I don't know what shit it is, but just because most, but not all, Linux distros use it, does not make it Linux either.  We still have Devuan and Gentoo at least.

The problem (for Linux users) is that Systemd is required for more and more Linux apps that won't work without it.

Apart from Devuan and Gentoo there is also MX Linux which has a Systemd 'framework' for dependent applications but doesn't use it itself. I use MX on my Thinkpad and it is just *perfect*, right down to controlling the screen mounted keyboard lamp for night use

[techman-001]

I don’t like any of them 

I've been running FreeBSD since 1994, version 1.1....

Ever since the first day that I saw it was running wcarchive.cdrom.com, it has been my favorite OS.

Have you tried it?

This workstation runs FreeBSD. I switched from Linux about 4 years ago, (after using it for the previous 18 years) and find FreeBSD totally stable, dead easy to maintain and mostly free of the latest Linux fads. One thing that bothers me is that it appears that FreeBSD 12.0 uses ZOL and not OpenZFS.

I really like OpenBSD as well, but I'm addicted to ZFS and BSD Jails now.

[Charles Swain]

The problem (for Linux users) is that Systemd is required for more and more Linux apps that won't work without it.

Unfortunate considering systemd likes to change the name and form of every keyword so it's even harder to remember everything... I miss upstart.

[techman-001]

The problem (for Linux users) is that Systemd is required for more and more Linux apps that won't work without it.

Unfortunate considering systemd likes to change the name and form of every keyword so it's even harder to remember everything... I miss upstart.

Checkout the NOSH project, I think it has potential as it claims to work with everything and apps can be converted one at a time. See "For the Linux user" further down the page.

   http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/index.html

[Karel]

"If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won," the kernel creator Linus Torvalds said back in 1998. Well, you've won, Linus.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/02/microsoft_surface_phone/

[rrinker]

 Oh Register, it's not called the Surface Phone. It's called the Surface Duo, it's more a tablet type device that can somewhat be used as a phone, instead of a phone that can somewhat be used as a general computing device.

 I still fail to see how ANYONE who is in or somewhat follows the industry is surprised by moves like this. Windows does not generate much in revenue. MS doesn't care about Windows. They care about you using an Exchange Online subscription for email. They care about you getting your apps through an Office 365 subscription.. They care about you using a OneDrive subscription to store your data. Recurring revenue, instead of one-time purchases. The device no longer matters, the apps are available for traditional Windows as well as iOS and Android. Maybe slightly surprising that they release an Android device, because no one hinted at it or leaked it ahead of time, but it's certainly not something out of left field when you consider the push to subscription-based services.

 I have no use case for this device, so I won't be getting one. But I'll bet I can find some good use cases for it.

[Mr. Scram]

The Surface devices themselves are actually one of Microsoft's money makers. Not the majority for sure but still a 2 billion gig and still growing.

[bd139]

I suspect there are very few "second time surface owners". All I hear in the wild is bitching and "I'm not buying this piece of shit again" and "I'm going back to my iPad".

It's one of those things that in a tablet mode it's awful, and the ipad is better. In the laptop mode, it's awful, and any POS windows laptop is better. It's also more expensive than either.

[techman-001]

2018: Microsoft's Surface sales remain stagnant despite launch of three new models

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3025786/microsofts-surface-selling-is-a-tad-lacklustre-but-cloud-keeps-climbing

[Karel]

"If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won," the kernel creator Linus Torvalds said back in 1998. Well, you've won, Linus.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/02/microsoft_surface_phone/

Actually, Linus "won" already a couple of years ago:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-overview?view=sql-server-2017

[bd139]

Hardly. SQL Server worked on Unix years ago. Back when it forked off Sybase.

Also not a lot of people know it but IE4 worked on Unix. Oh and Microsoft sold their own Unix variant (Xenix) and it has the highest overall sales of Unix derivatives.

[Black Phoenix]

I suspect there are very few "second time surface owners". All I hear in the wild is bitching and "I'm not buying this piece of shit again" and "I'm going back to my iPad".

It's one of those things that in a tablet mode it's awful, and the ipad is better. In the laptop mode, it's awful, and any POS windows laptop is better. It's also more expensive than either.

In my last work company my assigned laptop was the Microsoft Surface Book and to be sincere I liked the guy a lot. Yes in tablet mode that thing is basically not the best experience at the face of earth...

Ok it was not even a experience. The more Microsoft tries to do, Windows 10 is not optimised to touch:

https://mspoweruser.com/sad-abandoned-state-tablet-mode-windows-10/

Specially when there isn't a set design image from all the apps (specially the UWP apps) included with Windows 10 where the Design image of one app is not consistent with the next one.

Forgetting that as a laptop I really like the concept of having a powerful tablet that can use for some kind of monitoring work while having a kind of "docking station' with a keyboard and extra GPU power plus battery. The weight of the equipment in tablet mode, the battery usage when docked and the screen real estate and image quality and ability to use the pen for notes were spot on.

Although some times it would not undock when pressing the button to do it, having to restart for having the function of doing it. The rotation sometimes would also lock or not work at all, and the battery on tablet was not that great, but as expected since the tablet was were all the processing power and storage were installed, the dock was only for an extra battery, some more expansion, an extra GPU and the Keyboard.

The software is the one to let down - from Microsoft as from other developers (let's be sincere if it's not a mobile  app, is not going to be developed to be touch friendly. That was one of the strong suits of Apple, the separation between MacOS and the now iPadOS. For years users were asking and rumors were circulating that Apple in a future with the bigger iPads would make a form factor like the iPad run the MacOS).

To end, hardware wise it was good (the hinge itself it was a wonder of engineering) what was being "slowed down" by the software. Would I use it again instead of my Zenbook? Yes I would, but only if the aforementioned points above were solved.

[Mr. Scram]

I suspect there are very few "second time surface owners". All I hear in the wild is bitching and "I'm not buying this piece of shit again" and "I'm going back to my iPad".

It's one of those things that in a tablet mode it's awful, and the ipad is better. In the laptop mode, it's awful, and any POS windows laptop is better. It's also more expensive than either.

iPads are great for media consumption. Surface Pros are great for various kinds of media creation. Once people get used to the unique options the Surfaces offer people seem to love them even just for office work. It's a fairly potent full blown computer in a very compact form factor so you don't have to dick around with mobile apps which always seem more limited in some way. I've seen many people go from meh to love it, myself included. The initial models definitely had rough edges but the Surfaces have been polished into a shine since. An obvious and massive drawback is the lack of serviceability but the iPad doesn't do better in that regard. It's a sad par for the course.

[Mr. Scram]

2018: Microsoft's Surface sales remain stagnant despite launch of three new models

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3025786/microsofts-surface-selling-is-a-tad-lacklustre-but-cloud-keeps-climbing

This year's Surface sales have been up 39%, which I referred to in the post previous to yours. Stop pushing your silly agenda already.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/30/18204207/microsoft-q2-2019-earnings-cloud-services-surface-gaming-windows

[Sal Ammoniac]

Linux has a huge share here because of licensing costs, not technical merit. Can you imagine how much companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon would have to pay Microsoft in licensing fees if they used Windows Server instead of Linux?

Google, Amazon and Facebook are some of the wealthiest companies in the world, they could very easily afford to use Windows if they wanted to but why would they want to get locked into a proprietary OS?

They are now, but they weren't always wealthy. They started small and grew to what they are today and at the beginning they scrounged whatever they could to build their first server farms. Have you ever seen pictures of Google's first servers? They consisted of open shelves with bare PC motherboards sitting on a pieces of cardboard (for insulation), a disk drive, an Ethernet board, and not much else. Definitely a bare bones effort by a new startup that couldn't afford anything better. A Windows Server license would have cost several times the hardware cost of each of these servers. That's why they used Linux early on, and once they had the infrastructure based on Linux in place, there was no reason to change after they struck gold.

[RoGeorge]

Windows never shined at the server side, or at networking, that was always a *nix territory.

[james_s]

In my last work company my assigned laptop was the Microsoft Surface Book and to be sincere I liked the guy a lot. Yes in tablet mode that thing is basically not the best experience at the face of earth...

Ok it was not even a experience. The more Microsoft tries to do, Windows 10 is not optimised to touch:

That is similar to my experience with the Surface as well.

They could have avoided the vast majority of all the controversy and hatred by taking the more sensible approach of not trying to merge the desktop and mobile/touch experience into one. This is something that I feel Apple got right, MacOS and iOS are separate distinct products that are each optimized for the specific use cases they target. They have a similar look & feel but they do not attempt to shoehorn both experiences into the same. Windows ever since 8 has been awkward at best, it's a spork, trying to be everything at once and failing to be optimal for anything.

[Mr. Scram]

Windows never shined at the server side, or at networking, that was always a *nix territory.

That's what's always said but I was surprised to find Windows Server represents between a third and 90% of the market, depending on which exact server role you look at. Those aren't the numbers I expected.

[Nominal Animal]

Depending on which exact server role you look at.

The role where no other server can be compatible with the Windows clients, because of EEE tactics; like Active Directory (because using standard LDAP instead of MS's abortion of it, would have allowed competition)?

And before you tell me AD is better than LDAP, reconsider what I just told you above.

[Mr. Scram]

The role where no other server can be compatible with the Windows clients, because of EEE tactics; like Active Directory (because using standard LDAP instead of MS's abortion of it, would have allowed competition)?

And before you tell me AD is better than LDAP, reconsider what I just told you above.

It seems that in the webserver market the share is about one third for Microsoft and on any other server like database or file servers the share is bigger. Generally by a lot as far as I can find. These market shares just surprised me. Use whatever works for you and gets the job done.

[techman-001]

Windows never shined at the server side, or at networking, that was always a *nix territory.

That's what's always said but I was surprised to find Windows Server represents between a third and 90% of the market, depending on which exact server role you look at. Those aren't the numbers I expected.

The market you're looking at is Windows Servers where a third and 90% of the machines run Windows, and the rest run Linux because they want files and printing served by a reliable OS (not Windows).

[Nominal Animal]

According to w3techs, only 8.2% of web sites are served by IIS; in September 2019, on 6.8% of the top 10,000 web sites, and on 9.5% of top 1,000,000 web sites.  For the top sites, Nginx, Cloudflare, and Apache seem to be the most popular, in that order.

Anyway, statistics are just statistics.  I don't actually care what other people use, as long as the services I use are reasonably skookum, it's just that the figure you stated looked odd to me, Mr. Scram.

[techman-001]

The role where no other server can be compatible with the Windows clients, because of EEE tactics; like Active Directory (because using standard LDAP instead of MS's abortion of it, would have allowed competition)?

And before you tell me AD is better than LDAP, reconsider what I just told you above.

It seems that in the webserver market the share is about one third for Microsoft and on any other server like database or file servers the share is bigger. Generally by a lot as far as I can find. These market shares just surprised me. Use whatever works for you and gets the job done.

I'm glad I didn't read that when I was drinking my morning coffee or I'd still be cleaning the screen!

Please feel free to supply some actual data to back up your Windows  fantasies.

[Nominal Animal]

Please feel free to supply some actual data to back up your Windows  fantasies.

No need to get snippy.  The server statistics are hard to collect, as you have to find the URL of every one; and even then, how can you tell whether two or more sites are served by the same server instance?

Companies themselves often pick the ways that make them look best, obviously.  It is not clear which analyst is actually independent, and which one has a contract with one or the other, so even reliable-looking market reports can be pure fluff.

That said, of web servers, it does look like slightly under 10% is more likely correct than the 33% figure mentioned.

[Mr. Scram]

I'm glad I didn't read that when I was drinking my morning coffee or I'd still be cleaning the screen!

Please feel free to supply some actual data to back up your Windows  fantasies.

Sorry, I don't have fantasies about OSs. I just use whatever works for me and move on if it doesn't. Feel free to indulge though but keep it private please. 

[Mr. Scram]

The market you're looking at is Windows Servers where a third and 90% of the machines run Windows, and the rest run Linux because they want files and printing served by a reliable OS (not Windows).

Can you rephrase your sentence because I'm not sure what you mean.

[Mr. Scram]

According to w3techs, only 8.2% of web sites are served by IIS; in September 2019, on 6.8% of the top 10,000 web sites, and on 9.5% of top 1,000,000 web sites.  For the top sites, Nginx, Cloudflare, and Apache seem to be the most popular, in that order.

Anyway, statistics are just statistics.  I don't actually care what other people use, as long as the services I use are reasonably skookum, it's just that the figure you stated looked odd to me, Mr. Scram.

I've been clicking around various statistics, categories and statistics so I concede I may have misquoted the stated number. I'll have a look later to see whether I can reproduce what I actually looked at. Regardless it's obvious the web isn't Windows Server's strong suit.

[Mr. Scram]

[Classic original Surface Pro 1 user here, also Surface Pro 6 user here (though I didn't like it and gifted it to my dad), and Surface Go user here (current daily driver on the go, and MacMini as workstation) and Surface Pro 7 pre-ordered customer here.

I only had one iPad 4 Mini, and I'm glad I gave it away. My friends do use iPhones, and most of them would prefer if I use iMessage, so I tried to convert to iPhone twice, each time ended up giving them away as expensive gifts.

I used to evaluate iPad gen 1 and iTouch gen 1, and I have to say I never liked iOS in the first place. I'm one of the few people who use macOS as main OS yet absolutely don't like iOS.

What didn't you like about the Surface Pro 6?

[techman-001]

The market you're looking at is Windows Servers where a third and 90% of the machines run Windows, and the rest run Linux because they want files and printing served by a reliable OS (not Windows).

Can you rephrase your sentence because I'm not sure what you mean.

Sure, always happy to help.

I mean that a lot of "Windows Servers" are actually Linux servers running Samba and no one knows except the Admin.

[Black Phoenix]

The picture is just laughable. When you see node.js taking 0.7% of the market, you know it's wrong.

Many embedded IoT systems run node.js, it doesn't make it a powerful server engine.

Google Servers only occupies 1% of the market, but supports the world's largest Internet empire.

Tengine supports all Alibaba services, including Taobao, Tmall, Alibaba, Aliexpress and others, despite the 0.1% market share (FYI, eBay runs on IIS).

The number is highly useless, since server count doesn't correlate with total PV count.

The majority of servers running on a VPS (personal blogs, etc.) run Apache or Nginx, yet they combined have negligible traffic compared with the big players.

My $5/month Amazon LightSail runs Apache, and it doesn't mean anything. OTOH, a Google server serves millions. They both count as one server.

From when I worked on the Altice PT, was the biggest mobile telecom operator in Portugal. HLR services were build into Oracle Servers running Red Hat, the AuC was a build of Suse, test servers were CentOS and configuration servers were VMware with Windows Server 2003 and Windows 98Se for config (Server 2003 for the new R4 equipments, 3G while Windows 98Se for the config of the old R99 Releases, 2G) that we would connect remotely by Citrix or in my case I would connect directly by IP to the machine via SSH and then run a request to the IP of the equipment were I wanted to send the commands, via SecureCRT. I'm talking only about the Core Network, I don't know how was the access one configured. The monitoring Geoprobe was Solaris and the VoiceMail from ZTE I think it was also CentOS.

The machines provided to workers were all under Windows 7 Pro while some as me could ask for Windows 8.1 Pro as beta testers, to future deployment. That was before the release of Windows 10 in July 2015.

[Karel]

Edge browser comes to Linux! 

https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/79341

[bd139]

I think that news gave me cancer

[Monkeh]

It's just Chromium under the surface now anyway. They admitted defeat. Although I think they're still persisting with their own high performance security hole called Chakra.

[SiliconWizard]

Edge of what anyway...

[Nominal Animal]

Perhaps MS has a plan of providing binary-only browser extension modules that interface to IIS on the server side, providing vendor lock-in enhanced UX and monitoring facilities for corporate environments?  Say, "enterprise-quality" three-factor authentication for banks, with integrated support for facial, fingerprint, and DNA scanning?

Yeah, I won't be using it.

[techman-001]

Edge of what anyway...

Edge of Tomorrow Yesterday ?

[mikerj]

"If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won," the kernel creator Linus Torvalds said back in 1998. Well, you've won, Linus.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/02/microsoft_surface_phone/

Irrespective of the utility of his Unix clone, Torvalds really does come across as a bit of a dick.

[magic]

He just wants world domination like Billy G and everybody else

[james_s]

I'd always heard that Torvalds was a dick, then at some point I saw various presentations by him and he seemed like a decent guy. A bit blunt maybe, not terribly tactful, but he's an engineer, that tends to come with the territory. I don't think he deliberately tries to be a prick.

[SiliconWizard]

Yeah. I personally don't care and have never seen the point of following the "Linus is a dick" herd. I fucking don't care. What he's done has been tremendously useful, and that's all I care for.

[Nominal Animal]

Linus is blunt, like myself and many other Finns, and used to cuss out those that offered him badly done work, or were plain wrong but refused to acknowledge it.
I still do, with vigor, because I get so angry when someone offers work product they clearly didn't put any effort into, or even thought about at all.  They deserve a cussing, in my opinion.  It is different when people have limited capability; having the capability but not giving a toss and being wrong, and refusing to admit it, is definitely worth a hard cussing in my book.

As to him being a dick.. Well, one of his favourite party tricks at university parties was to have his then girlfriend, now wife, Tove, show some moves by throwing him around.

Those that say he is a dick mean he isn't as socially graceful and aware as they think he should be.
Because he has tried to become much more so in the last decade or so, his own work quality has fallen.
(My favourite examples are some of the subsystem inanities he's let into Linux, like the input event ioctl() stuff "replacing" the standard read()/write() interface, without bringing anything positive, just complicating simple things -- and the patches claim it is for the good, because sometime in the future, they might wish to change this interface.  It hasn't, except for the ioctl inanity, since 2001 or so.)
In his own words, his biggest responsibility is to be able to say No to stuff.

[Karel]

In his own words, his biggest responsibility is to be able to say No to stuff.

Sometimes I think, what's gonna happen with Linux when Linus and Greg retire. I'm afraid it's not going to end well. I hope I'm wrong.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

He just wants world domination like Billy G and everybody else

There should be a (Say Thanks)^-1 button.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

The only reason JavaScript has no proper tail calls yet is... Chakra (their JavaScript engine). Thank you (not) M$, again.

[SiliconWizard]

Looks like that's one Chakra that is not open at all.
 

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

They open sourced it? Meh. Nobody cares!

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54719548/tail-call-optimization-implementation-in-javascript-engines#answer-54721813

TCO, or rather, Tail Call Elimination in JavaScript -- also often referred to as Proper Tail Calls (PTC) in discussions -- is a long and sad story.

Around 2011, TC39 (the JavaScript standards committee) decided to adopt mandatory TCE for the forthcoming ES6 standard, with consensus from all major browser vendors.

In 2015, the new standard was officially adopted, under the name EcmaScript 2015. At this point, no browser had actually implemented TCE, mostly because there were too many new features in ES2015 that were deemed more important to get out. (Today's process for JS feature proposals and their adoption, which includes the requirement of two implementations in production engines, did not yet exist for ES6.)

In early 2016, both Safari and Chrome implemented TCE. Safari announced shipping it, while Chrome kept it behind an Experimental Feature flag. Other browsers (Firefox and Internet Explorer / Edge) started looking into it as well and had second thoughts. Discussion evolved whether this is a viable feature after all. Edge had problems implementing it efficiently for the Windows ABI, Firefox was concerned about the developer experience of calls "missing" from stack traces (an issue that was already discussed at length in 2011).

In an attempt to address some of these concerns while rescuing the tail call feature, several members, including the Chrome and Edge teams, proposed to make tail calls explicit, i.e., require return statements to be annotated with an additional keyword to opt into tail call semantics. These so-called "syntactic tail calls" (STC) were implemented in Chrome as a proof of concept.

At the May 2016 TC39 meeting the issue of tail calls was discussed extensively for almost an entire day with no resolution. Firefox and Edge made clear that they would not implement TCE as specified in the standard. Firefox members proposed to take it out. Safari and Chrome did not agree with that, and the Safari team made clear that they have no intention of unshipping TCE. The proposal for syntactic tail calls was rejected as well, especially by Safari. The committee was in an impasse. You can read the meeting notes of this discussion.

Technically, this impasse still exists today, as far as I am aware. Practically speaking, though, tail calls for JavaScript are pretty much dead, and it's unclear whether they will ever come back. At least that was the conclusion of the Chrome team after the disastrous meeting, which led to the decision to remove the implementation of tail calls from Chrome, in order to simplify the engine and prevent bit rot. They are still available in Safari.

Disclosure: I was a member of TC39 and of the Chrome/V8 team until 2017, so my views may be biased.

It seems the usual firefox fuckwits (all that haven't left mozilla and moved on to work at Brave) had something to do with that too. Nobody should be using firefox anymore today, everybody ought to be switching to Brave ( https://brave.com/ ) asap.

[bd139]

It wasn't done because it's a fucking stupid idea. Fortunately design by committee did a good thing here. Think of these two scenarios:

Firstly (versioning):

1. Hey everyone has tail calls supported. Woohoo.
2. Let's rewrite everything using tail recursion!
3. Deploy and suddenly one million users explode as their tail recursion turned into a stack blaster because they haven't actually got Chrome version 99,000,000 on their steaming pile of 4 year old Android dung which was abandoned.

Secondly (determinism):

1. Along comes former PHP developer who just crawled out of the sea and evolved enough fingers to hit a keyboard and smoke. That's most JS developers.
2. Converts everything to tail calls but doesn't know what one is and does a shitty job of it.
3. Actually doesn't realise half their tail calls aren't tail calls but plain recursion and only tests it with a tiny little dataset.
4. Throws it out, explodes.

That applies if you mark it with some "hack attribute" like a PHP developer would or any other way.

Ergo between versioning and determinism this introduces a whole fresh form of footgun and the people who suffer are the poor fuckers running the pieces of shit the guys above thought was a great idea.

Actually the entire web is a massive fucking hack job and this is just another horrible horrible piece of shit to step in as your wading around. We don't need it. It really doesn't do anything useful at the end of the day and is something implicit rather than explicit which is sooooo dangerous when every freshly evolved monkey with a text editor gets their hand on it.

Edit: add meme:

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

LOL. Two words: feature detection.

Code: [Select]

var GOT_TCO= 1;
try { ƒ(3e5) } catch (e) { GOT_TCO= 0 }
if (GOT_TCO) { ... } else { ... }


[bd139]

But then the next thing you'll need autoconf for Javascript at which point I'm going to go postal.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Look: https://modernizr.com/

[magic]

Code: [Select]

var GOT_TCO= 1;
try { ƒ(3e5) } catch (e) { GOT_TCO= 0 }
if (GOT_TCO) { ... } else { ... }


I frankly don't care, Web 2.0 is already lost to me. I browse with noscript, use FailFox reader mode to reveal images that fail to show up without scripts (it manages to do it surprisingly often) and only enable GayEss if I really must. Oh well, come to think about it, I have it enabled here, but that's because this is a Web 1.0 forum software so it doesn't suck as badly.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Web 2.0?? You've been living under a rock?

[bd139]

Look: https://modernizr.com/

Ahh a fucking hack job.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

I'd bet both you and magic spend more than half the time in the browser. But here you're both of you complaining... LOL.

[bd139]

I've spent the last 20 years writing HTML, JavaScript and CSS by hand for rather well known large web facing companies. I've lived and fought through ALL the fads from XML data islands, through jQuery, Angular etc. I know this intimately well to the point of spending hours debugging IE specific issues and having MS connect cases open due to browser bugs. I've opened 20 odd Chrome defects as well. And at this moment I'm prototyping an interface for something in Bootstrap that lives inside Electron

What I have is battle scars and a right to bitch.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Impressive CV! How is it that you forgot those two magic words then?

[bd139]

Like my uncle, he did not speak of the Falklands after being there.

I rather prefer to loiter on the security and architecture side of things now. The Electron project is a front end for a commercial project I am engineering from the ground up for me.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

If you ever get tired of nodejs and having to write it all backwards non sequentially, try this: https://github.com/Sage/streamlinejs it's much easier to use than it seems.



That's you??? 

[bd139]

If you ever get tired of nodejs and having to write it all backwards non sequentially, try this: https://github.com/Sage/streamlinejs it's much easier to use than it seems.



That's you??? 

When node turned up I laughed, sicked in my mouth and crawled back in a hole with SICP and wrote a scheme interpreter.

Is that me? Some days! 

I only write software these days because money. 

[Karel]

Second, Microsoft became less of a Windows company and more of a cloud company, supporting Linux on Azure,
porting its .NET and SQL Server technology to Linux, and supporting both Linux containers and then Linux Kubernetes on Azure.

Microsoft's efforts to run Linux have been successful. By late 2018 the company acknowledged that there were more
Linux VMs on Azure than Windows and today the proportion must be significantly higher.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/29/windows_server_containers_azure_kubernetes/

[Karel]

"starting in October, Microsoft Edge on Linux will be available to download on the Dev preview channel."

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2020/09/22/whats-new-in-web-experiences-ignite-2020-need-to-secure-your-remote-workers-choose-microsoft-edge-as-your-browser-for-business/

[bd139]

That's scary.

To be fair I'm using it to write this post now and it's probably the least shit browser out there at the moment. It's basically Chrome without all the annoying shitty bits.

[David Hess]

A large part of the problem is that Windows 8 / 10 is really easy to hate and this is coming from a veteran of Windows. It's honestly the most retarded version of Windows I have *ever* used.

I am still struggling to get Windows 10 to do things which were trivial with Windows XP, like NOT FUCKING STEALING WINDOW FOCUS!

[RoGeorge]

A large part of the problem is that Windows 8 / 10 is really easy to hate and this is coming from a veteran of Windows. It's honestly the most retarded version of Windows I have *ever* used.

I am still struggling to get Windows 10 to do things which were trivial with Windows XP, like NOT FUCKING STEALING WINDOW FOCUS!

That's easy to fix, you need to install an app called Kubuntu (not from the Windows Apps Store).   
It will change a little the look of your desktop, but in a good way.

[David Hess]

That's easy to fix, you need to install an app called Kubuntu (not from the Windows Apps Store).   
It will change a little the look of your desktop, but in a good way.

I will soon have some spare workstation class hardware to evaluate that.

[BravoV]

A large part of the problem is that Windows 8 / 10 is really easy to hate and this is coming from a veteran of Windows. It's honestly the most retarded version of Windows I have *ever* used.

I am still struggling to get Windows 10 to do things which were trivial with Windows XP, like NOT FUCKING STEALING WINDOW FOCUS!

Currently, my main desktop has two boot drives, one with W10 and other one with Linux Mint.

Linux gets booted by frequency, starting to increase maybe 40 to 50% of the time, my personal mission is to get rid of W10 by next year. 

[bd139]

Good luck with that. I’ve been trying to eviscerate windows since 1997.

[Ed.Kloonk]

"starting in October, Microsoft Edge on Linux will be available to download on the Dev preview channel."

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2020/09/22/whats-new-in-web-experiences-ignite-2020-need-to-secure-your-remote-workers-choose-microsoft-edge-as-your-browser-for-business/

https://youtu.be/8QjrBjdb2T8?t=33

[Karel]

"starting in October, Microsoft Edge on Linux will be available to download on the Dev preview channel."

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2020/09/22/whats-new-in-web-experiences-ignite-2020-need-to-secure-your-remote-workers-choose-microsoft-edge-as-your-browser-for-business/

https://youtu.be/8QjrBjdb2T8?t=33

 

[drussell]

Currently, my main desktop has two boot drives, one with W10 and other one with Linux Mint.

Linux gets booted by frequency, starting to increase maybe 40 to 50% of the time, my personal mission is to get rid of W10 by next year. 

Good luck with that. I’ve been trying to eviscerate windows since 1997.

Run FreeBSD or your favorite flavor of Linux as your main OS and only fire up whatever various versions of Windows you need for something specific in a VM when you really need it.

Problem solved.

[bd139]

I do that the other way round... Linux VMs in windows.

[drussell]

I do that the other way round... Linux VMs in windows.

That's how we know you're a masochist. 

You're doing it backwards! 

Why, why, why would you do it that way?   

[bd139]

Nope. Because fractional scaling, Excel, Word, Visual Studio, LTspice, Fusion 360, power management and GTA V actually work then.

I'm a Linux developer / admin / operations person by day as are a lot of my colleagues. There are no Linux desktops here at all, out of choice.

[drussell]

Like I said....

That's how we know you're a masochist. 

 

[bd139]

Correction: well paid masochist 

[drussell]

Correction: well paid masochist 

Touché!

[Karel]

"Linux-based Windows makes perfect sense"

https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-based-windows-makes-perfect-sense/

[Ed.Kloonk]

"Linux-based Windows makes perfect sense"

https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-based-windows-makes-perfect-sense/

Holy cow!

[Karel]

"We are pleased to announce the availability of the Microsoft Edge Dev Channel for Linux!"

https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2020/10/20/microsoft-edge-dev-linux/

[bsfeechannel]

The desktop war is over. Linux's won. Now we can finally turn our Linux installs into a Windows sithole™.

[bd139]

Meh. It’s chrome with a skin and Microsoft’s shit instead of google in it. Google and apple already did the legwork.

What is even more scary is some miserable excuse for a human ported PowerShell over to Linux. That’s like walking into a synagogue with a nazi uniform on.

[Nominal Animal]

What is even more scary is some miserable excuse for a human ported PowerShell over to Linux.

That's not at all scary compared to when a bunch of otherwise sane people start touting it as the next best thing since sliced bread.

And then all distros decide to make it the default shell from now on.

[bd139]

If that happens I'm buying a Commodore 64 and moving to the woods.

[Nominal Animal]

Why do you think I started doing electronics as a hobby?

[bd139]

To be fair that's why I started this as well.

[olkipukki]

If that happens I'm buying a Commodore 64 and moving to the woods.

Too late, we will find you there too 






https://github.com/KillerFeature/WT64

[drussell]

Nothing new, this is all the standard Microsoft-style "Embrace, Extend, Exterminate" procedure.

Were you guys not around for the Halloween Documents?   

(Not that it wasn't already obvious...)

[bd139]

Well fuck. What unholy hell is that on windows terminal. Sick sick sick bastards 

[Karel]

Microsoft Deepens Its Investments in Java

“For the past 23 years, the Java Community Process (JCP) program has guided the specification of the Java platform in cooperation with the
international Java developer community. The JCP program welcomes participation and membership from corporate, open source, individual,
and Java User Group participants. We are delighted to welcome Microsoft to the JCP program; it continues to represent the vibrant Java ecosystem.
We look forward to seeing their contributions.”

“The JCP is the place where we define and discuss the future of Java, and where we need the collaboration of all the Java community”,
adds Bruno Souza, President of the SouJava User Group, an Executive Committee Member of the JCP. “Microsoft has been an important
part of this community, with their involvement in OpenJDK but also supporting Java User Groups and community events. Because of all that,
Microsoft has become a strong partner of SouJava and we are excited to have them go even deeper on their commitment with the Java community.”

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/java/microsoft-deepens-its-investments-in-java/

[SiliconWizard]

So, should we take this as a hint to the future death of Java?

[Ed.Kloonk]

So, should we take this as a hint to the future death of Java?

IKR. MS pays too much for Skype prior to a worldwide situation that has never before depended on so much video conferencing. So what did people use? Zoom.

hahahahahahaha

[David Hess]

I noticed that a Windows 10 update recently installed Skype, whether I have any interest in it or not, and now pesters me if I do not have a Microsoft account.

[Ed.Kloonk]

I noticed that a Windows 10 update recently installed Skype, whether I have any interest in it or not, and now pesters me if I do not have a Microsoft account.

Don't be afraid.

[Karel]

Looks like windows is going the android way. The only thing still missing is a Linux-based kernel...

[SiliconWizard]

I noticed that a Windows 10 update recently installed Skype, whether I have any interest in it or not, and now pesters me if I do not have a Microsoft account.

 

[Karel]

Microsoft: How to download and install Linux

In this article

• Choose a method to install Linux
• Choose a Linux distribution
• Follow install method instructions
• After installing Linux

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/linux/install