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The End of Windows

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Re: The End of Windows

#481

Post by [deleted] »

cm2187 wrote: post #460
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…

What strikes me is that their latest bet seems to be universal web apps. I have nothing against UWA in themselves but I very much doubt that the mass of Java/VB/C#/C++ developers that write the bulk of Windows apps will suddenly move to JavaScript. And if you ported your app to the web why bother with UWA.

[deleted]

Re: The End of Windows

#482

Post by m45t3r »

Someone1234 wrote: post #178
segmondy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you still have to, except you don't have to.

Except I have in the last month, I was following this article: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshootingProced... Someone should tell Ubuntu that this is no longer needed.

This is for when you're having issues, quite rare nowadays. Similar things happen on Windows, for example fiddling with drivers to get sound to work or stop popping.

Re: The End of Windows

#483

Post by diffeomorphism »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #367
badsectoracula wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still is an edge case when the case is rare and people with high dpi Linux laptops (or monitors in general) combining them with regular dpi monitors is rare. Hell, high dpi monitors by themselves are still rare.

It's as rare as high dpi laptops, which are less and less rare nowadays. If you have a laptop, you're gonna plug it to an external screen at some point, and regular dpi screens are very not rare. This shortcoming is indefensible and should've been fixed years ago

The intersection of people that care about high dpi laptop screens, but not about high dpi external screens is very, very small. Also, if you are in that group, why wouldn't you just turn down the resolution on the laptop or even turn it off (since you connected a low dpi external monitor, you don't seem to care about the additional sharpness of high dpi, right?)?

High dpi is important as is low dpi (for a while still at least), mixed dpi is an edge case even if you disagree.

Re: The End of Windows

#484

Post by wilun »

criddell wrote: post #303
simonh wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There as nothing wrong with their desktop core technology. Visita at least allowed them to solve the security issues, and with seven they had a really great, solid desktop OS. The problem was actively undermining all that with Metro and RT. What’s popular and effective about 10 is all the crud they stripped off it, much more than anything they added, just as with 7.

> with seven they had a really great, solid desktop OS. The problem was actively undermining all that with Metro and RT. I sometimes wonder if maybe they should have done a hard fork between 7 and 8 and continue to develop 7 for commercial users and 8 would be the consumer version. In the commercial branch, they could undo some of the moves they made years ago (like putting GDI in the kernel rather than user space) t…

I think they recently put backs tons of kernel space code back in userspace (in recent versions of 10), probably because the quantity of discovered security vulns started to become really ridiculous.

Re: The End of Windows

#485

Post by s73v3r_ »

cm2187 wrote: post #460
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…

What strikes me is that their latest bet seems to be universal web apps. I have nothing against UWA in themselves but I very much doubt that the mass of Java/VB/C#/C++ developers that write the bulk of Windows apps will suddenly move to JavaScript. And if you ported your app to the web why bother with UWA.

Agreed. If I wanted to be a web/javascript developer, I would already be doing JavaScript. But I don't want to.

Re: The End of Windows

#486

Post by flarg »

thanatropism wrote: post #364
ynniv wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were true, Linux on the desktop would have already won and this decision wouldn't be controversial. I think what's preventing this is that making a productive desktop operating system is more difficult than we think.

The desktop matters less and less. The only computer I own at home (other than ipad/iphone) is a Chromebook. But I lease a cheap VPS that lets me do "computer stuff" otherwise.

Not at all; if you want to consume a lot and create a little then your thesis is right, but the desktop is king for creators. There are a slew of very mature Windows only software out there serving many fields of endeavour for which there are no competitors in either FOSS or other OSs.

Re: The End of Windows

#487

Post by s73v3r_ »

ynniv wrote: post #121
SonicSoul wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> macOS isn't business-level stable amazing how many people here are missing the point. this is not about Windows vs MacOS. Client OS has become a commodity with prices approaching 0 (MacOS no longer charges for upgrades, neither does iOS or Android) and users care less about how they get to Facebook. Think about server/mobile space. if MS tried to hang on to their dominance simply via desktop lock-in (because it wor…

Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter. Small to medium businesses perhaps, but all it takes is one downturn that tightens the purse strings, or one critical event that reveals their absolute dependence on a third party. SAAS solutions are fair weather, and while we've had a lot of good weather I don't expect them to be used for critical business functions in the long term.

"Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter."

Established businesses do this all the time.

Re: The End of Windows

#488

Post by simonh »

freehunter wrote: post #313
avtar wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Six SKUs of Windows desktop Here's hoping they'll rethink that at some point and follow Apple's approach of having just one desktop OS instead of nickel-and-diming the masses for features such as BitLocker.

On the other hand, compare Windows desktop marketshare with that of macOS. When you're tiny, limited choices makes sense. When you're huge, product differentiation makes sense. When you're a premium product, you can charge whatever you want. Windows appeals to people who spend $0 on an OS and also people who can spend $300 on an OS. If they cut that down to one product, they'd be losing money.

This is true, but fragmenting your platform is an existential threat. Nickel and diming customers just isn’t worth it. The problem is Microsoft thought they were so powerful and had such strong lock in that it didn’t matter. They were wrong, hence the radically simplified SKUs for 10.

But they just can’t bear to actually get it all right, so still try and stiff people to switch off ‘S’ mode.

Re: The End of Windows

#489

Post by equalunique »

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…

This surprises me too, but I also must recognize my own inherent bias: The places I have worked in for the past five years all have "enterprise" laptops which are loaded down with all kinds of agents, clients, and background services which just put a silly load on just an idle system. A measly 4GB of RAM would not be enough to run MS Office alongside IE.

The screen issue does bug me though. Not just a haxxor feature anymore, all basic Windows users can leverage the split-screen capability to put two applications side by side - on a 720p screen, there really isn't enough screen space to practically do this. I think 1080x1920 or at least 900x1600 should be the standard for 2018.

Re: The End of Windows

#490

Post by bitmapbrother »

cornholio wrote: post #94

I would love for Microsoft to launch it's own Android-compatible ecosystem, starting from the open source base of Android and building alternatives to Google's proprietary technology (location & mapping, email, browsing, app store etc.). They are one of the few companies who have the capacity to do that and already have products in place to cover 80% of what is required. While I'm not exactly a fan of Microsoft, ther…

I'm always baffled whenever someone comes up with these wacky Google Android replacement suggestions. It's as if they selectively choose to ignore history and the billions, that would be futilely squandered, pursuing something that has absolutely zero chance of ever succeeding or even being profitable. I'm not sure what fantasy world you reside in, but replacing Google's proprietary apps and services with Microsoft's proprietary apps is not only a significantly less value proposition for the consumer, but there's absolutely no incentive for the consumer or OEM to even remotely consider such a platform. You will never have the ecosystem and you will never have the developer support and whatever developers and OEM's you do manage to bribe over they'll quickly abandon the platform once the payola dries up.

>There is now a whole industry dedicated to installing hacked Google products on devices Google does not approve of.

I think you meant to say there was until Google closed that loophole.

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