The End of Windows • Hacker News Board

Re: The End of Windows

#291

Post by criddell » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #166

asveikau wrote: post #33

I still can't wrap my head around everything that was wrongheaded about Windows 8, and I was working there for most of its dev cycle. One wonders what would have happened if they just sort of let Windows be Windows. I.e. if they had continued iterating on core stuff but left UI and general philosophy resembling Win7's trajectory and not tried to force people into WinRT/UWP/store. Even though Win10 attempted correctiv…

> One wonders what would have happened if they just sort of let Windows be Windows. I.e. if they had continued iterating on core stuff but left UI and general philosophy resembling Win7's trajectory and not tried to force people into WinRT/UWP/store. With Windows 8 they tried to do too much too quickly and not well, however their motivations and intention were spot on in my opinion. Security has always been a pain po…

Is there any metric that doesn't show the Windows Store to be an abysmal failure? Have any Windows Store apps gone viral? Despite the enormous installed user base, there seems to be a definite lack of excitement around Windows apps (other than games) compared to the Android and iOS app stores. And for games, Steam feels like it's more dominant.

Re: The End of Windows

#292

Post by Multicomp » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #237

ynniv wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that getting Office to run on Android and iOS is a bright future, but that doesn't mean you put Windows in the corner with "some other stuff". Maybe there are too many people on it and they've gotten too comfortable? Spin it out into a company with half the staff and let it soak up its own sun.

The problem with Windows is operating systems are a commodity. You shouldn't care about it. You are about opening your documents on your desktop and phone - you don't even care what program opens the documents. Mac OSX, Linux+desktop (any of several), IOS, and Android are all operating systems that can do everything you need of an OS, except MAYBE run windows programs. Which is to say Windows as a separate company pr…

Are you kidding? I'd be ecstatic to go purchase a new boxed copy of Windows 11 Pro 2018, so long as it was basically Windows 7 shell with Windows 10 kernel and security updates, no UWP/Cortana/store/telemetry addons, and settings that stay set.

I'd even buy the Windows 12 Pro 2021 version when the time came for fundamental internals shifting like wider WSL access.

Re: The End of Windows

#293

Post by RX14 » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 4:31 PM UTC

dannyw wrote: post #257

bhauer wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That hardware report is surprising to me in many ways. * In 2018, the most popular resolution for users of Firefox is still 1366x768. And only 1920x1080 is making any headway against the dominance of 1366x768. As much as I am surrounded by the culture of multiple 4K+ displays, apparently this is not at all commonplace. 4K doesn't even get listed, presumably lumped into the "Other" category. * In 2018, the most popula…

You seem to assume a large portion of users are software engineers or tech people. You may consider a 16GB ‘bare minimum’, but not everyone needs that - nor can even afford that (or a laptop more than, say, new or used for $750).

My brand new thinkpad with 16gb ram and a 1080p ips display cost only £670. These specs aren't expensive any more.

That being said, my parents are perfectly happy using Google chrome on 2gb ram with a core 2 duo. And that's not with only a few tabs.

Re: The End of Windows

#294

Post by maxxxxx » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

willtim wrote: post #235

pjmlp wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bother to try to sell desktop software to users that want everything for free, and with source code available? Usually the only ones willing to pay for Linux software are enterprise shops.

Linux users expect not to be locked-in and controlled. Perhaps if vendors tried different revenue models, such as sponsoring new features or charging for support/bug fixes. Over the last few years I have spent several hundred dollars in donations to free (libre) software. We are not all cheapskates :)

"We are not all cheapskates :)"

Most are though.

Re: The End of Windows

#295

Post by bayindirh » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

bhauer wrote: post #243

cpeterso wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see a nice graph showing (Firefox) users steadily upgrading from Windows 7 to 10 from Mozilla's Firefox telemetry: https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/#goto-os-and-architectu...

That hardware report is surprising to me in many ways. * In 2018, the most popular resolution for users of Firefox is still 1366x768. And only 1920x1080 is making any headway against the dominance of 1366x768. As much as I am surrounded by the culture of multiple 4K+ displays, apparently this is not at all commonplace. 4K doesn't even get listed, presumably lumped into the "Other" category. * In 2018, the most popula…

> In 2018, the most popular resolution for users of Firefox is still 1366x768. And only 1920x1080 is making any headway against the dominance of 1366x768. As much as I am surrounded by the culture of multiple 4K+ displays, apparently this is not at all commonplace. 4K doesn't even get listed, presumably lumped into the "Other" category.

Most of the tasks in the real world doesn't need multiple 4K displays, including low level and systems development. Most people read stuff, and as a developer and system administrator, when the text is looking good, this means the resolution is enough.

> In 2018, the most popular memory amount for users of Firefox is still 4GB, trailed by the also disappointingly small 8GB. In my world, I consider 16GB a bare minimum, but at least with memory I haven't been deluding myself—I know many people economize on memory. Still, I would have thought 8GB was the most common memory size by now.

8 GB is more than enough for most people. My family's Win10 desktop is happy with 4GB, my office desktop is cozy with 8GB. My own desktop has 16GB of RAM, but it runs many, albeit small, virtual machines. "The hardware is cheap, let's waste it" mentality doesn't help anyone and it's wrong. I've written some state of the art algorithms which use 1.5MB of RAM and make the CPU scream for cooling (I develop high performance computing software as a side-academic gig), so like every resource, RAM should be used sparingly.

Edit: I've no comment for flash. I think it's a forgotten remnant of old systems.

Re: The End of Windows

#296

Post by pmarreck » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 4:33 PM UTC

cornholio wrote: post #249

pmarreck wrote: post #229

Ballmer must be the #1 executive who has gotten the farthest on the least intelligence.

Ballmer had a perfect 800 score on his SAT math section. He kept the company expanding revenue and profits for a decade and a half, which is an eternity in Internet time. His Windows on mobile strategy was a few years late from being a huge success (agreed, that is also an eternity).

Intelligence is not just your SAT math score (and for the record, I had a 770). His business/tactical decisions were obvious ones once Windows achieved hegemony.

Re: The End of Windows

#297

Post by criddell » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #275

asveikau wrote: post #33

I still can't wrap my head around everything that was wrongheaded about Windows 8, and I was working there for most of its dev cycle. One wonders what would have happened if they just sort of let Windows be Windows. I.e. if they had continued iterating on core stuff but left UI and general philosophy resembling Win7's trajectory and not tried to force people into WinRT/UWP/store. Even though Win10 attempted correctiv…

Remember at that time Windows 8 was the MS solution for tablets and MS was getting killed in the tablet space as iOS took off. Windows 8 wasn't officially out until a year after the first iPad. They had to get it out asap.

Windows 8 may have been a response to iOS popularity, but don't forget that Microsoft had been pushing tablets for a long time by then. They had a huge head start over Apple. If you want to include Windows for Pen Computing, then it was an 18 year lead that they lost overnight.

Re: The End of Windows

#298

Post by user5994461 » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

willtim wrote: post #280

user5994461 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> Let me ask you a quick question: How can I distribute an application in a way that will work on all Linux Desktops? It's a trick question without a clear answer. Many people tried, noone has ever succeeded.

Steam on Linux works very well.

The next question would be on which distributions and which versions of which distributions?

Linux is a very large family of operating systems, with hundreds of members and variations. It's really a meaningless term.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1504-QHX...

Re: The End of Windows

#299

Post by asveikau » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #244

alkonaut wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They bet the farm on “store”. Why? Because they must have done the math and realized that the enterprise and “creative pro” desktop with classic expensive desktop apps is a dead end. Was that calculation correct? Who knows. But I have to think they did that analysis very carefully.

I think they saw Apple’s success with the iOS App Store, saw Apple trying to do the same on desktop and tried to leap ahead of them by forcing the pace. Of course when app stores on desktop, for both Apple and Microsoft, proved much more problematic to implement, ramming it through like that proved highly damaging.

It's funny because even if you put yourself in the mind of 2009, you can imagine a much more modest store feature doing good things for end users.

The old Windows desktop might have had a half dozen things prompting you to elevate and update. Flash player, Adobe reader, Java runtime, all these things wanted your undivided attention to update, not to mention were polling the network and using resources to do that. So maybe you could see a single piece of infrastructure allowing those third parties to hook in less intrusively.

But that's not what they asked for. They would prefer you trash your app and write for the thing they came up with this year, to be thrown away when they do the rewrite the next year.

Re: The End of Windows

#300

Post by badsectoracula » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

Asooka wrote: post #196

pjc50 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the more amazing bits of technology in Windows is that which allows the graphics drivers to crash and restart without taking down the system. They've spent so long fighting buggy third parties that this is the solution.

One thing I love about debugging on Windows is that a program being debugged cannot grab the mouse and keyboard. On Linux, if you break a program that has a context menu open, you can say goodbye to your ability to interact with the PC.

You can enable grab break actions with "setxkbmap -option grab:break_actions" and then use Ctrl+Alt+KP/ to break grabs and Ctrl+Alt+KP* to kill the applications with grabs (note that setxkbmap -option blah adds the blah option to the existing options, which might interfere with this - you can try and reset all options by typing just "setxkbmap -option" without a parameter and then typing "setxkbmap -option grab:break_actions").

This is useful both when debugging and when dealing with broken applications.