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The End of Windows

stratechery.com

101–110 of 617 posts

Re: The End of Windows

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux on desktop is pretty amazing. Haven't looked back in 3 years.

You gotta be kidding me. Good luck using multiple HiDPI monitors. The only reasonable way to use Linux is tiling wm with as less graphical interface as possible, in my case only xterm and emacs. Which is crazy, since it’s 2018. and I am using modern computer with modern OS like how computers were used before I was even born.

I'm not having any problems running two monitors in HiDPI with my Ubuntu Studio workstation .. everything just works and I enjoy it immensely. Curious what your issues are...

Re: The End of Windows

#102

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…

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.

Re: The End of Windows

#103
post #6

I'll be interested to see how this bifurcation of the Windows team plays out. Windows 10 has been a mixed bag - some nice new features but also a lot of half baked buggy stuff. The evergreen nature of Windows 10 feels like the right move, but I'm worried they're going to let the OS stagnate. There's already a lot of low hanging fruit they could clean up with an update, but haven't. I'm not a huge fan of using my tabl…

> also a lot of half baked buggy stuff This morning I noticed I have a 3D Objects folder pinned to the This PC item that I can't remove. I also have Mixed Reality Portal and Mixed Reality Viewer that I can't remove. Why on earth are those apps part of the default install? Worse though - why doesn't Microsoft make it easy to uninstall them? I don't want their crappy news, weather, contacts, maps, music, and other defa…

That's to be able to claim an 'installed base of 100's of millions of users' for technology 'x'. Even if none of those people installed it voluntarily or has ever used it.

Re: The End of Windows

#104
post #65
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of Dev work unfortunately Linux is not that much fun. If you need to do accounting, graphics or other work there are options on Linux but they are usually way behind what Mac or Windows are offering.

This has nothing to do with Linux, rather with the publishers who decide not to support Linux or any particular distro at least.

Yeah sure, let's not wonder why maybe developers don't want to develop for your platform or anything.

Re: The End of Windows

#105
post #90
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the other day I was also pretty amazed how using VS Code alongside Rust, for writing a Gtk-rs application, managed to hang X forcing me to reboot the whole thing. With the open source AMD drivers.

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.

QnX did that in ... 1983.

Re: The End of Windows

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux on desktop is pretty amazing. Haven't looked back in 3 years.

You gotta be kidding me. Good luck using multiple HiDPI monitors. The only reasonable way to use Linux is tiling wm with as less graphical interface as possible, in my case only xterm and emacs. Which is crazy, since it’s 2018. and I am using modern computer with modern OS like how computers were used before I was even born.

To some, that is good. Despite fancy displays, the terminal is still far more efficient in my opinion for many operations, although graphics are nice for things and those things work great on Linux

Re: The End of Windows

#107
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny - I use a linux desktop in a VM only when I absolutely have to. Because I can't get much done without a struggle. But to each his own!

Opposite. I use Linux in VM because I can't be bothered to do everything in Windows (when I have to be on Windows).

Reverse here: I only boot my Windows VM when I really need to build something with Windows. Other than that, its Linux all the way. I find it an utterly pleasant experience compared with either Windows or MacOS, which is interesting..

Re: The End of Windows

#108
post #48

This seems like a ridiculous strategy. Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of? If they're spending too much money on it, stop adding features and harden what they already have. It's increasingly clear that macOS isn't business-level stable, and Linux isn't polished... No one has an Android device on their desk at work. Maybe if they stopped trying to take over the world they would realize that they…

> 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 worked in the past) that would be their Kodak moment. All Nadela is doing here is emphasizing efforts on staying competitive in cloud/o365 which is where he thinks they can continue to grow and stay competitive and bring in revenues from enterprise clients. Less and less companies want to lease/run their own windows/database servers, and with technologies like containers a lot of companies are now going with open source solutions.

Re: The End of Windows

#110
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's already a lot of low hanging fruit they could clean up with an update, but haven't. In all honesty that's been my impression of Windows since its inception. The only time I can recall ever feeling like Windows was deserved market leader was with Windows 2000: Linux wasn't mature on the desktop, OS X wasn't yet released or literally only just released and OS 9 was god awful (worse than the Win 95 in my opini…

I think because there's no career advancement at Microsoft, working on cleaning up existing features. Only by working on new stuff can you get noticed. So, interns work on 'old' stuff (like office apps, Windows, tools). And they always look pretty rough.

That's pretty much how it works everywhere. There's no career, or even pay, advancement for people who like to do this sort of work. You're called a "maintenance programmer" which people take to mean you're not very good. On the contrary, a lot of those types of developers are very good. Better than the people who initially wrote the code and jumped ship when the bugs started rolling in that they couldn't fix. They understand the system and the business much better than the talky-talky system architecture wanna-bes.

Whew, that turned into a rant quickly. I've just seen plenty of strong, smart developers get screwed because they don't do flashy work.

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